The widow from Torquay arrived next morning; so did the actress from Putney. I let each one suppose that the other was my near relative, and never left them for a moment together, lest they should discover their error. I gave them separately to understand that their troubles would be satisfactorily settled. I made much of the rigors of training, which compelled the Bantam to absent himself. They didn’t meet him until after they had seen him racing, by which time he had become a kind of hero to them. I saw them safely off at the station by different trains--so the crash was averted. When Eights’ Week was ended the Bantam vanished, without explanation to the college. A month later I attended his wedding. Kitty had asked permission to invite one guest--she wouldn’t tell us his name. When we three had assembled in the little Church of Old St. Mary’s, Stoke Newington, who should come fussing up the aisle but my uncle, the Spuffler. He wore a frayed frock-coat; the end of his handkerchief was hanging out of his tail-pocket, as usual. All through the service he gave himself such important airs that the clergyman took it for granted that the bride was his daughter. We jumped into a couple of hansoms and drove down to Verrey’s to lunch. The Bantam said he knew he couldn’t afford it, but he was determined to have one good meal before he busted. We had a private room set apart for us. The Spuffler tasted the best champagne he had drunk since his fiasco. It made him reflective. He kept on telling us that life was a switchback--an affair of ups and downs. The Bantam cut him short by proposing a toast to all the ladies he hadn’t married. And I sat and stared at Kitty, with her cornflower eyes and sky-blue dress, and wondered where my eyes had been that I hadn’t married her myself. We went to the Parks and took a boat on the Serpentine. It was there that the Bantam let his bomb burst: he was sailing on the _Celtic_, via New York, for Canada. He felt sure his father would disown him for having spoilt his Oxford opportunities, so he was going to start life afresh in a land where no one would remember. In the autumn, when I returned to Lazarus, I had an opportunity to judge how the world treats breakers of convention. No one had a good word to say for the Bantam. Everybody was eager to disclaim him as his friend--he had married a shop-girl. Yet Halloway, who sinned cavalierly without twinge of conscience or attempt at reparation, was spoken of, even by persons who had never known him, with a kind of tolerant, admiring affection. So much for what this taught me of social morality. Playing safe, and not ethical right or wrong, was the standard of conventional righteousness.