"Ged, sir--it's a woman--of course. Don't think I'm accusing you of any political ambition. Ha! ha! No, sir. You're like me! it's a woman--lovely woman--I saw it at a glance! Gentlemen like you and me don't go through to fifty years without giving some thought to these dear little creatures. Sir, I despise a man who did. It's the weakness of a great man, sir." Mr. Dumphy pushed his chair back with the grim deliberation of a man who had at last measured the strength of his adversary and was satisfied to risk an encounter. "Look here, Colonel Starbottle, I don't know or care who your plaintiff is. I don't know or care how she may have been deceived or wronged or disappointed or bamboozled, or what is the particular game that's up now. But you're a man of the world, you say, and as a man of the world and a man of sense, you know that no one in my position ever puts himself in any woman's power. I can't afford it! I don't pretend to be better than other men, but I ain't a fool. That's the difference between me and your clients!" "Yes--but, my boy, that _is_ the difference! Don't you see? In other cases the woman's a beautiful woman, a charming creature, you know. Ged, sometimes she's as proper and pious as a nun, but then the relations, you see, ain't legal! But hang it all, my boy, this is--YOUR WIFE!" Mr. Dumphy, with colourless cheeks, tried to laugh a reckless scornful laugh. "My wife is dead!" "A mistake--Ged, sir!--a most miserable mistake. Understand me. I don't say that she hadn't ought to be! Ged, sir, from the look that that little blue-eyed hussy gave you an hour ago--there ain't much use of another woman around, but the fact is that she _is_ living. You thought she was dead, and left her up there in the snow. She goes so far as to say--you know how these women talk, Dumphy; Ged, sir, they'll say anything when they get down on a man--she says it ain't your fault if she wasn't dead! Eh? Sho?" "A message, sir, business of the Bank, very important," said Dumphy's servant, opening the door. "Get out!" said Dumphy, with an oath. "But, sir, they told me, sir"---- "Get out! will you?" roared Dumphy. The door closed on his astonished face. "It's all--a--mistake," said Dumphy, when he had gone. "They died of starvation--all of them--while I was away hunting help. I've read the accounts." Colonel Starbottle slowly drew from some vast moral elevation in his breast pocket a well-worn paper. It proved when open to be a faded, blackened, and be-thumbed document in Spanish. "Here is the report of the Commander of the Presidio who sent out the expedition. You read Spanish? Well. The bodies of all the other women were identified except your wife's. Hang it, my boy, don't you see why she was excepted? She wasn't there."