acres in a southern county. Just good people! By Heavens, I sometimes think that it would have been better for him, poor dear, if the case had been such a one that I must needs have heard of it—such a one as maids and couriers and other Kur guests whisper about for years after, until gradually it dies away in the pity that there is knocking about here and there in the world. Supposing he had spent his seven years in Winchester Gaol or whatever it is that inscrutable and blind justice allots to you for following your natural but ill-timed inclinations—there would have arrived a stage when nodding gossips on the Kursaal terrace would have said "Poor fellow," thinking of his ruined career. He would have been the fine soldier with his back now bent . . . Better for him, poor devil, if his back had been prematurely bent.
Why, it would have been a thousand times better? . . . For, of course, the Kilsyte case, which came at the very beginning of his finding Leonora cold and unsympathetic, gave him a nasty jar. He left servants alone after that.
It turned him, naturally, all the more loose amongst women of his own class. Why, Leonora told me that Mrs. Maidan, the woman he followed from Burma to Nauheim—assured her he awakened her attention by swearing that when he kissed the servant in the train he was driven to it. I daresay he was driven to it, by the mad passion to find an ultimately satisfying woman, I daresay he was sincere enough. Heaven help me, I daresay he was sincere enough in his love for Mrs. Maidan. She was a nice little thing, a dear
