I found out at
the Club that the Other Man is coming up sick--very sick--on an off chance of
recovery. The fever and the heart-valves had nearly killed him. She knew that,
too, and she knew--what I had no interest in knowing--when he was coming up. I
suppose he wrote to tell her. They had not seen each other since a month
before the wedding. And here comes the unpleasant part of the story.
A late call kept me down at the Dovedell Hotel till dusk one evening. Mrs.
Schreidlerling had been flitting up and down the Mall all the afternoon in the
rain. Coming up along the Cart-road, a tonga passed me, and my pony, tired
with standing so long, set off at a canter. Just by the road down to the Tonga
Office Mrs. Schreiderling, dripping from head to foot, was waiting for the
tonga. I turned up-hill, as the tonga was no affair of mine; and just then she
began to shriek. I went back at once and saw, under the Tonga Office lamps,
Mrs. Schreiderling kneeling in the wet road by the back seat of the newly-
arrived tonga, screaming hideously.
Then she fell face down in the dirt as I came up.
Sitting in the back seat, very square and firm, with one hand on the awning-
stanchion and the wet pouring off his hat and moustache, was the Other Man--
dead.
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