She preferred some semblance of intrigue to cloak even her most commonplace
actions.
After two months of riding, first round Jakko, then Elysium, then Summer Hill,
then Observatory Hill, then under Jutogh, and lastly up and down the Cart Road
as far as the Tara Devi gap in the dusk, she said to the Tertium Quid, "Frank,
people say we are too much together, and people are so horrid."
The Tertium Quid pulled his moustache, and replied that horrid people were
unworthy of the consideration of nice people.
"But they have done more than talk--they have written--written to my hubby--
I'm sure of it," said the Man's Wife, and she pulled a letter from her husband
out of her saddle-pocket and gave it to the Tertium Quid.
It was an honest letter, written by an honest man, then stewing in the Plains
on two hundred rupees a month (for he allowed his wife eight hundred and
fifty), and in a silk banian and cotton trousers. It is said that, perhaps,
she had no thought of the unwisdom of allowing her name to be so generally
coupled with the Tertium Quid's; that she was too much of a child to
understand the dangers of that sort of thing; that he, her husband, was the
last man in the world to interfere jealously with her little amusements and
interests, but that it would be better were she to drop the Tertium Quid
quietly and for her husband's sake.
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