This showed itself later on.
Then many months passed, and Mrs. Schreiderling took to being ill.
She did not pine away like people in story books, but she seemed to pick up
every form of illness that went about a station, from simple fever upwards.
She was never more than ordinarily pretty at the best of times; and the
illness made her ugly. Schreiderling said so. He prided himself on speaking
his mind.
When she ceased being pretty, he left her to her own devices, and went back to
the lairs of his bachelordom. She used to trot up and down Simla Mall in a
forlorn sort of way, with a gray Terai hat well on the back of her head, and a
shocking bad saddle under her.
Schreiderling's generosity stopped at the horse. He said that any saddle would
do for a woman as nervous as Mrs. Schreiderling. She never was asked to dance,
because she did not dance well; and she was so dull and uninteresting, that
her box very seldom had any cards in it. Schreiderling said that if he had
known that she was going to be such a scare-crow after her marriage, he would
never have married her. He always prided himself on speaking his mind, did
Schreiderling!
He left her at Simla one August, and went down to his regiment.
Then she revived a little, but she never recovered her looks.
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