nople in which he had been travelling
had been blown to atoms by the apostles of Liberty and Progress. You can
say it completed the cure, if you like. To read that brief note of
courteous and regretful reproach was like encountering a polite phantom.
After recording his unalterable conviction that only death or a woman
could have prevented an Englishman of honour from keeping an
appointment, he begged to trespass so far upon my generous impulses as
to send me the package, fully addressed to his brother in London. He
would esteem it a favour if I would deliver it in person. The sudden
alarming turn of events rendered it imperative to despatch these papers
by a secure and unsuspected hand. Should nothing happen, it would be a
simple matter for him to communicate with his brother when the present
troubles were over. Otherwise ... and so on. He would not do more than
allude to the question of recompense, which would be on a scale
commensurate with the magnitude of the obligation. The Captain, no
doubt, would consent to keep the package in his safe during the
voyage....

"Well, the _Manola_ had no safe, but Jack had a formidable old cash-box
in his room, and it was with the idea of carrying out the behests of one
who could no longer enforce them that I carried the big yellow envelope
to Jack and told him how I came by it. Even when it was condensed to
suit his bluff mentality, it was a long story. I was astonished at the
abstraction into which it threw him. On the road he returned to it again
and again. His imagination continually played round the history of 'that
gel' as he called her. He could not get used to the startling fact that
all this had been going on 'under his very nose, by Jingo!' and he
hadn't had the slightest suspicion. 'Forgotten all about her, very
nearly. And by the Lord, I thought you had, too, Fred.'

"And I should like," said Mr. Spenlove, "to have heard him tell Mrs.
Evans. Perhaps, though, it would not have proved so very sensational
after all. It is exceedingly difficult to shock a woman who has been
married for a number of years. They seem to undergo a process which,
without affording them any direct glimpse into the bottomless pit,
renders them cognizant of the dark ways of the human soul. Perhaps you
don't believe this. Perhaps you think I am only trying to joke at the
expense of a married woman I never liked. Well, try it. Take a benign
matron of your own family, who has endured the racking stra