“No, by George! It didn’t last long. For the first year or two, it was all billing and cooing. They took a little place in Surrey, and gave themselves up to rurality and domestic affection. Old Ffrench used to spend half his time there with ’em. And when Fenella’s boy was born, they had a story that the colonel was seen wheeling a perambulator about the garden, and administering a feeding-bottle. It did seem as though Fenella had begun to put a good deal of water in her wine, as the Italians say. They hadn’t been married three years when Colonel Ffrench died suddenly. I was not in England at the time. I was in a very low state--all to pieces! In fact, Sir Abel Adamson has since confessed that he thought my nervous system--however, that will probably not interest you. I set off on a long sea voyage, which they said was my best chance. And, in point of fact, I prowled about for more than a year and a half. It was in Japan that I got hold of an old _Times_ with the announcement of Ffrench’s death. Oho! thought I to myself. My Lady Francis Onslow will come in for a nice little pile. She had something when she married. And, of course, Ffrench left her everything he had in the world.” “Then Lord Francis Onslow hadn’t made a bad thing of it?” “A very good thing of it!--from the financial point of view, that is. He was a duke’s son; but I needn’t tell you that a duke’s fifth son----” “Can’t expect to marry a lady from Chicago or New York with millions of dollars in pigs or petroleum. Of course not! That’s reserved for his seniors,” said Jacynth. Lord Castleton laughed. But he did not quite like this little speech. He considered himself the least bumptious of men about his rank. But there was something in Jacynth’s words--a twang, not only of bitterness, but of contempt--which Lord Castleton inwardly pronounced to be “bad form.” But Jacynth was sore, poor wretch! Terribly sore! However, his lordship compressed his narrative somewhat, as being very doubtful what venomed criticism might be lurking in the barrister’s mind. “Well, the main point of the story is what happened after the colonel’s death, and when Frank Onslow and his wife went up to town. Only I thought it well to give you a glimpse of the madcap sort of life the girl had been allowed to lead, because it, to some degree, explains a good deal of her reckless way of carrying on.” Lord Castleton fancied he heard Jacynth mutter under his breath, “Poor child!” But the clean-shaven, firmly molded jaw looked set and grim when he glanced at it; and a countenance less expressive of any “compunctious visitings” of sentiment than the countenance of Clitheroe Jacynth, barrister-at-law, as it appeared in that moment, it would be difficult to imagine.