"
And Dicky, who fancied he had been through every trouble that a man is
permitted to know, had to laugh and agree; with the last line of his balanced
Bank-book jingling in his head day and night.
But he had one more sorrow to digest before the end. There arrived a letter
from the little wife--the natural sequence of the others if Dicky had only
known it--and the burden of that letter was "gone with a handsomer man than
you." It was a rather curious production, without stops, something like this:--
"She was not going to wait forever and the baby was dead and Dicky was only a
boy and he would never set eyes on her again and why hadn't he waved his
handkerchief to her when he left Gravesend and God was her judge she was a
wicked woman but Dicky was worse enjoying himself in India and this other man
loved the ground she trod on and would Dicky ever forgive her for she would
never forgive Dicky; and there was no address to write to."
Instead of thanking his lucky stars that he was free, Dicky discovered exactly
how an injured husband feels--again, not at all the knowledge to which a boy is
entitled--for his mind went back to his wife as he remembered her in the
thirty-shilling "suite" in Montpelier Square, when the dawn of his last morning
in England was breaking, and she was crying in the bed.
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