consolations were really very welcome. It pleased him also to
offer them. The jilting he had long ago forgiven indeed, he blessed her
nightly for having taken that view of her obligations, seeing that Jane
Millet, as she was then, however pretty her face may once have been, had
neither fortune nor connections.

"Yes, my dear Jane," he said to her confidentially one afternoon, "I
assure you I often admire your foresight. Now, if you had done the other
thing, where should we have been to-day? In the workhouse, I imagine."

"I suppose so," answered Lady Rawlins, meekly, and suppressing a
sigh, since for the courtly and distinguished Colonel she cherished
a sentimental admiration which actually increased with age; "but you
didn't always think like that, Richard." Then she glanced out of the
window, and added: "Oh, there is Jonah coming home, and he looks so
cross," and the poor lady shivered.

The Colonel put up his eyeglass and contemplated Jonah through the
window. He was not a pleasing spectacle. A rather low-class Hebrew who
calls himself a Christian, of unpleasant appearance and sinister temper,
suffering from the effects of lunch, is not an object to be loved.

"Ah, I see," said the Colonel. "Yes, Sir Jonah ages, doesn't he?
as, indeed, we do all of us," and he glanced at the lady's spreading
proportions. Then he went on. "You really should persuade him to be
tidier in his costume, Jane; his ancestral namesake could scarcely have
looked more dishevelled after his sojourn with the whale. Well, it is
a small failing; one can't have everything, and on the whole, with your
wealth and the rest, you have been a very fortunate woman."

"Oh, Richard, how can you say so?" murmured the wretched Lady Rawlins,
as she took the hand outstretched in farewell. For Jonah in large doses
was more than the Colonel could stomach.

Indeed, as the door closed behind him she wiped away a tear, whispering
to herself: "And to think that I threw over dear Richard in order to
marry that--that--yes, I will say it--that horror!"

Meanwhile, as he strolled down the street, beautifully dressed, and
still looking very upright and handsome--for he had never lost his
figure--the Colonel was saying to himself:

"Silly old woman! Well, I hope that by now she knows the difference
between a gentleman and a half-Christianised, money-hunting,
wine-bibbing Jew. However, she's got the fortune, which was what she
wanted, although she forgets it now, an