Page:The Story of the Gadsbys - Kipling (1888).djvu/33

 —Regiment cut up rough, think you?

—Don't know anything about the regiment.

—It is bigamy, then?

—May be. Do you mean to say that you men have forgotten, or is there more charity in the world than I thought?

—You don't look pretty when you are trying to keep a secret. You bloat. Explain.

—Mrs. Herriott!

(after a long pause, to the room generally).—It's my notion that we are a set of fools.

—Nonsense. That business was knocked on the head last season. Why, young Mallard

—Mallard was a candlestick, paraded as such. Think a while. Recollect last season, and the talk then. Mallard or no Mallard, did Gaddy ever talk to any other woman?

—There's something in that. It was slightly noticeable now you come to mention it. But she's at Naini Tal, and he's at Simla.

—He had to go to Simla to look after a globe-trotter relative of his—a person with a title. Uncle or aunt.

.—And there he got engaged. No law prevents a man growing tired of a woman.

—Except that he mustn't do it till the woman is tired of him. And the Herriott woman was not that.

—She may be now. Two months of Naini Tal works wonders.

—Curious thing how some women carry a Fate with them. There was a Mrs. Deegie in the Central Provinces whose men invariably fell away and got married. It became a regular proverb with us when I was down there. I remember three men desperately devoted to her, and they all, one after another, took wives.

—That's odd. Now I should have thought that