s gone!
The very nature of her last adventure by a successful issue has blown
out the light of my life.

_She has stolen Constant-Scrappe!_

If I could be light of heart in this tragic hour I would call this story
the Adventure of the Lifted Fiance, but that would be so out of key with
my emotions that I cannot bring myself to do it. I must content myself
with a narration of the simple facts of the lengths to which my
beloved's ambition led her, without frivolity and with a heavy heart.

Of course you know what all Newport has known for months, that the
Constant-Scrappes were seeking divorce, not that they loved one another
less, but that both parties to the South Dakota suit loved some one else
more. Colonel Scrappe had long been the most ardent admirer of Mrs.
Gushington-Andrews, and Mrs. Constant-Scrappe's devotion to young Harry
de Lakwitz had been at least for two seasons evident to any observer
with half an eye. Gushington-Andrews had considerately taken himself out
of the way by eloping to South Africa with Tottie Dimpleton of the
Frivolity Burlesquers, and Harry de Lakwitz's only recorded marriage had
been annulled by the courts because at the time of his wedding to the
forty-year-old housemaid of the Belleville Boarding-School for Boys at
Skidgeway, Rhode Island, he was only fifteen years of age. Consequently,
they both were eligible, and provided the Constant-Scrappes could be so
operated on by the laws of South Dakota as to free them from one
another, there were no valid reasons why the yearnings of these ardent
souls should not all be gratified. Indeed, both engagements had been
announced tentatively, and only the signing of the decree releasing the
Constant-Scrappes from their obligations to one another now stood in the
way of two nuptial ceremonies which would make four hearts beat as one.
Mrs. Gushington-Andrews's trousseau was ready, and that of the future
Mrs. de Lakwitz had been ordered; both ladies had received their
engagement rings when that inscrutable Henriette marked Constant-Scrappe
for her own. Colonel Scrappe had returned from Monte Carlo, having
broken the bank twice, and Henriette had met him at a little dinner
given in his honor by Mrs. Gushington-Andrews. He turned out to be a
most charming man, and it didn't require a much more keen perception
than my own to take in the fact that he had made a great impression upon
Henriette, though she never mentioned it to me until the final blow
cam