and devoted mother who
worshipped, spoiled--and ruined me.

I enlisted under an assumed name in my late father's (and
grandfather's) old Regiment of Foot and quickly rose to the rank of
Sergeant-Major.

I might have had a commission in South Africa but I decided that I
preferred ruling in hell to serving in heaven, and declined to be a
grey-haired Lieutenant and a nuisance to the Officers' Mess of the Corps
I would not leave until compelled.

In time I _was_ compelled and I became Sergeant-Major of the Volunteer
Rifle Corps here and husband of a--well--_de mortuis nil nisi bonum_.

Why I married I don't know.

The English girl of the class from which soldiers are drawn never
attracted me in the very least, and I simply could not have married one,
though a paragon of virtue and compendium of housewifely qualities.

Admirable and pretty as Miss Higgs, Miss Bloggs, or Miss Muggins might
be, my youthful training prevented my seeing beyond her fringe,
finger-nails, figure, and aspirates, to her solid excellences;--and from
sergeants'-dances I returned quite heart-whole and still unplighted to
the Colonel's cook. But Dolores De Souza was different.

There was absolutely nothing to offend the most fastidious taste in her
speech, appearance, or manners. She was convent-bred, accomplished,
refined, gentle, worthless and wicked. The good Sisters of the Society
of the Broken Heart had polished the exterior of the Eurasian orphan
very highly--but the polish was a thin veneer on very cheap and
unseasoned wood.

It is a strange fact that, while I could respect the solid virtues of
the aspirateless Misses Higgs, Bloggs or Muggins, I could never have
married one of them; yet, while I knew Dolores to be a heartless flirt,
and more than suspected her to be of most unrigid principle, I was
infatuated with her dark beauty, her grace, her wiles and witchery--and
asked her to become my wife.

The good Sisters of the Society of the Broken Heart had taught Dolores
to sing beautifully, to play upon the piano and the guitar, to
embroider, to paint mauve roses on pink tambourines and many other
useful arts, graces and accomplishments--but they had not taught her
_practical_ morality nor anything of cooking, marketing, plain sewing,
house-cleaning or anything else of house-keeping. However, having been
bred as I had been bred, I could take the form and let the substance go,
accept the shapely husks and shout not for the grain, and pref