as gone--the
pearls which Montague had given her in '86, when Benedict was born, and
which James had been compelled to pay for in the spring of '87, to save
scandal. She consulted her husband at once. He 'pooh-poohed' the matter.
They would turn up! Nor till she said sharply: "Very well, then, Monty,
I shall go down to Scotland Yard myself," did he consent to take the
matter in hand. Alas! that the steady and resolved continuity of design
necessary to the accomplishment of sweeping operations should be liable
to interruption by drink. That night Dartie returned home without a
care in the world or a particle of reticence. Under normal conditions
Winifred would merely have locked her door and let him sleep it off, but
torturing suspense about her pearls had caused her to wait up for him.
Taking a small revolver from his pocket and holding on to the dining
table, he told her at once that he did not care a cursh whether she
lived s'long as she was quiet; but he himself wash tired o' life.
Winifred, holding onto the other side of the dining table, answered:

"Don't be a clown, Monty. Have you been to Scotland Yard?"

Placing the revolver against his chest, Dartie had pulled the trigger
several times. It was not loaded. Dropping it with an imprecation,
he had muttered: "For shake o' the children," and sank into a chair.
Winifred, having picked up the revolver, gave him some soda water. The
liquor had a magical effect. Life had illused him; Winifred had never
'unshtood'm.' If he hadn't the right to take the pearls he had given
her himself, who had? That Spanish filly had got'm. If Winifred had
any 'jection he w'd cut--her--throat. What was the matter with that?
(Probably the first use of that celebrated phrase--so obscure are the
origins of even the most classical language!)

Winifred, who had learned self-containment in a hard school, looked up
at him, and said: "Spanish filly! Do you mean that girl we saw dancing
in the Pandemonium Ballet? Well, you are a thief and a blackguard." It
had been the last straw on a sorely loaded consciousness; reaching
up from his chair Dartie seized his wife's arm, and recalling the
achievements of his boyhood, twisted it. Winifred endured the agony with
tears in her eyes, but no murmur. Watching for a moment of weakness,
she wrenched it free; then placing the dining table between them,
said between her teeth: "You are the limit, Monty." (Undoubtedly the
inception of that phrase--so is Englis