“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, and he’s got a lachrymose, stout, old party. But how beautiful she used to be! My word, how beautiful she used to be! To go to see her now is better than any sermon; it is an admirable moral exercise.” To Lady Rawlins also the Colonel’s visits proved excellent moral exercises tinged with chastenings. Whenever he went away he left behind him some aphorism or reflection filled with a wholesome bitter. But still she sought his society and, in secret, adored him. In addition to the club and Lady Rawlins there were the tables at Monte Carlo, with their motley company, which to a man of the world could not fail to be amusing. Besides, the Colonel had one weakness—sometimes he did a little gambling, and when he played he liked to play fairly high. Morris accompanied him once to the “Salles de jeu,” and—that was enough. What passed there exactly, could never be got out of him, even by Mary, whose sense of humour was more than satisfied with the little comedies in progress about her, no single point of which did she ever miss. Only, funny as she might be in her general feebleness, and badly as she might have behaved in some distant past, for Lady Rawlins she felt sorry. Her kind heart told Mary that this unhappy person also possessed a heart, although she was now stout and on the wrong side of middle age. She was aware, too, that the Colonel knew as much, and his scientific pin-pricks and searings of that guileless and unprotected organ struck her as little short of cruel. None the less so, indeed, because the victim at the stake imagined that they were inflicted in kindness by the hand of a still tender and devoted friend.