the Kilsyte case. I knew none of their
friends; they were for me just good people--fortunate people with broad
and sunny acres in a southern county. Just good people! By heavens, I
sometimes think that it would have been better for him, poor dear, if
the case had been such a one that I must needs have heard of it--such a
one as maids and couriers and other Kur guests whisper about for years
after, until gradually it dies away in the pity that there is knocking
about here and there in the world. Supposing he had spent his seven
years in Winchester Gaol or whatever it is that inscrutable and
blind justice allots to you for following your natural but ill-timed
inclinations--there would have arrived a stage when nodding gossips
on the Kursaal terrace would have said, "Poor fellow," thinking of his
ruined career. He would have been the fine soldier with his back now
bent.... Better for him, poor devil, if his back had been prematurely
bent.

Why, it would have been a thousand times better.... For, of course, the
Kilsyte case, which came at the very beginning of his finding Leonora
cold and unsympathetic, gave him a nasty jar. He left servants alone
after that.

It turned him, naturally, all the more loose amongst women of his own
class. Why, Leonora told me that Mrs Maidan--the woman he followed from
Burma to Nauheim--assured her he awakened her attention by swearing that
when he kissed the servant in the train he was driven to it. I daresay
he was driven to it, by the mad passion to find an ultimately satisfying
woman. I daresay he was sincere enough. Heaven help me, I daresay he was
sincere enough in his love for Mrs Maidan. She was a nice little thing,
a dear little dark woman with long lashes, of whom Florence grew quite
fond. She had a lisp and a happy smile. We saw plenty of her for the
first month of our acquaintance, then she died, quite quietly--of heart
trouble.

But you know, poor little Mrs Maidan--she was so gentle, so young. She
cannot have been more than twenty-three and she had a boy husband out in
Chitral not more than twenty-four, I believe. Such young things ought to
have been left alone. Of course Ashburnham could not leave her alone. I
do not believe that he could. Why, even I, at this distance of time am
aware that I am a little in love with her memory. I can't help smiling
when I think suddenly of her--as you might at the thought of something
wrapped carefully away in lavender, in some drawer, in s