y admitting that he was prepared to accept a verdict, with
L1000 damages. As the judge agreed, the case was abruptly terminated.

This, however, was only the first round. In December of the following
year, the next step was adopted, and a suit for divorce was commenced
in the Consistory Court. As neither Mrs. James nor the Lothario-like
Captain Lennox put in an appearance, Dr. Lushington, declaring himself
satisfied that misconduct had been committed, pronounced a decree _a
mensa et thoro_. All that this amounted to was merely a judicial
separation.

The report in _The Times_ only ran to a dozen lines. Considering that
the paper cost fivepence a copy, this was not a very liberal
allowance. Still, readers had better value in respect of another
action in "high life" that was heard the same day, that of Lord and
Lady Graves, which had a full column allotted it.

II

This was all that the public knew of the case. It did not seem much on
which to blast a young wife's reputation. Dr. Lushington, the judge of
the Consistory Court, however, knew a good deal more about the
business than did the general public. This was because, during the
preliminary hearing, held some months earlier and attended only by
counsel and solicitors, a number of damaging facts had transpired.

Mrs. James, said learned counsel for the petitioner, had "been guilty
of behaviour at which a crocodile would tremble and blush." A serious
charge to bring against a young woman. Still, in answer to the judge,
he professed himself equipped with ample evidence to support it. His
first witness was a retired civil servant, a Mr. Browne Roberts, who
had known the respondent's husband, first, as a bachelor in India, and
afterwards as a married man in Dublin. At the beginning of 1841, he
had received a call, he said, from a Major McMullen to whom Captain
Craigie had written, asking him to take charge of his step-daughter on
her arrival in London and see her off to his relatives in Scotland.
When, however, the major offered this hospitality, it was refused.
Thereupon, Mr. Roberts had himself called at the Imperial Hotel,
Covent Garden, and suggested that she should come and stop with his
wife; and this invitation was also refused.

Not much in this perhaps, but a good deal in what followed. Mrs.
Elizabeth Walters, the manageress of the Imperial Hotel, said that on
February 21, 1841, "a lady and gentleman arrived in a hackney cab,
with luggage marked G. Lennox