marriage at all. It
had been a secret affair from the beginning, as perhaps you can imagine.
The old man had other ideas for his daughter, and wasn't the sort of
father to be played with. They separated at the church door, intending
to meet again in the evening. Two hours later Master Tom Sleight got
knocked on the head in a street brawl. If a row was to be had anywhere
within walking distance he was the sort of fellow to be in it. When he
came to his senses he found himself lying in his bunk, and the 'Susan
Pride'--if that was the name of the ship; I think it was--ten miles out
to sea. The Captain declined to put the vessel about to please either a
loving seaman or a loving seaman's wife; and to come to the point, the
next time Mr. Tom Sleight saw Mrs. Tom Sleight was seven years later at
the American bar of the Grand Central in Paris; and then he didn't know
her."

"But what had she been doing all the time?" I queried. "Do you mean to
tell me that she, a married woman, had been content to let her husband
disappear without making any attempt to trace him?"

"I was making it short," retorted Henry, in an injured tone, "for your
benefit; if you want to have the whole of it, of course you can. He
wasn't a scamp; he was just a scatterbrain--that was the worst you could
say against him. He tried to communicate with her, but never got an
answer. Then he wrote to the father, and told him frankly the whole
story. The letter came back six months later, marked--'Gone away; left
no address.' You see, what had happened was this: the old man died
suddenly a month or two after the marriage, without ever having heard a
word about it. The girl hadn't a relative or friend in the town, all her
folks being French Canadians. She'd got her pride, and she'd got a sense
of humour not common in a woman. I was with her at the Grand Central for
over a year, and came to know her pretty well. She didn't choose to
advertise the fact that her husband had run away from her, as she
thought, an hour after he had married her. She knew he was a gentleman
with rich relatives somewhere in England; and as the months went by
without bringing word or sign of him, she concluded he'd thought the
matter over and was ashamed of her. You must remember she was merely a
child at the time, and hardly understood her position. Maybe later on
she would have seen the necessity of doing something. But Chance, as it
were, saved her the trouble; for s