her. Schreiderling's
generosity stopped at the horse. He said that any saddle would do for
a woman as nervous as Mrs. Schreiderling. She never was asked to dance,
because she did not dance well; and she was so dull and uninteresting,
that her box very seldom had any cards in it. Schreiderling said that
if he had known that she was going to be such a scare-crow after her
marriage, he would never have married her. He always prided himself on
speaking his mind, did Schreiderling!

He left her at Simla one August, and went down to his regiment. Then she
revived a little, but she never recovered her looks. I found out at the
Club that the Other Man is coming up sick--very sick--on an off chance
of recovery. The fever and the heart-valves had nearly killed him. She
knew that, too, and she knew--what I had no interest in knowing--when
he was coming up. I suppose he wrote to tell her. They had not seen each
other since a month before the wedding. And here comes the unpleasant
part of the story.

A late call kept me down at the Dovedell Hotel till dusk one evening.
Mrs. Schreidlerling had been flitting up and down the Mall all the
afternoon in the rain. Coming up along the Cart-road, a tonga passed me,
and my pony, tired with standing so long, set off at a canter. Just by
the road down to the Tonga Office Mrs. Schreiderling, dripping from head
to foot, was waiting for the tonga. I turned up-hill, as the tonga was
no affair of mine; and just then she began to shriek. I went back at
once and saw, under the Tonga Office lamps, Mrs. Schreiderling kneeling
in the wet road by the back seat of the newly-arrived tonga, screaming
hideously. Then she fell face down in the dirt as I came up.

Sitting in the back seat, very square and firm, with one hand on the
awning-stanchion and the wet pouring off his hat and moustache, was the
Other Man--dead. The sixty-mile up-hill jolt had been too much for his
valve, I suppose. The tonga-driver said:--"The Sahib died two stages out
of Solon. Therefore, I tied him with a rope, lest he should fall out
by the way, and so came to Simla. Will the Sahib give me bukshish? IT,"
pointing to the Other Man, "should have given one rupee."

The Other Man sat with a grin on his face, as if he enjoyed the joke of
his arrival; and Mrs. Schreiderling, in the mud, began to groan. There
was no one except us four in the office and it was raining heavily. The
first thing was to take Mrs. Schreiderling home, and the s