One day, when Isabel had been about a year married, a strange woman called upon her and announced herself as Warren Strickland's first wife, producing in proof of her claim what purported to be a certificate of marriage at a registrar's office, which anyone less ignorant of such matters than Isabel would at once have seen to be an impudent forgery. That Warren, when scarcely more than a boy--indeed, he was hardly more than that when he married--had been entangled in the toils of the woman, who was some half-dozen years his senior, and in a moment of infatuation had promised her marriage, there was little reason to doubt. Finding herself jilted, and Warren married to another, she had determined on the scheme of revenge described above. Unfortunately Isabel chose to believe the woman's tale, so plausibly was it told, and backed up by such apparent proofs; and without waiting to question Warren, she at once quitted her lodgings, taking her child with her, and leaving behind her a note in which she told her husband that she had left him for ever and the reason why, and begging of him, if he had any love for her still left, to make no attempt to find her. It was not till three or four days after Isabel had gone that the blow fell. Warren had run up to town to bid his wife a hurried farewell. His regiment was ordered to India, where a frontier war had just broken out, and he was due to embark at Portsmouth forty-eight hours later. For a few hours he was like a man bereft of reason; then the necessity for immediate action of some kind forced him, in his own despite, to face the facts of the case with some degree of outward calmness. At length he decided to adopt the only course which seemed to hold out any prospect of success. To have himself set about any search for his wife with only a few hours at his command would have been the sheerest folly. Having contrived, by means best known to himself, to raise a hundred pounds, he went to a Private Inquiry Agent and placed the whole of the facts in his hands, giving the man an address in India to write to. Little as it seemed at the time, it was all he could do, and a few hours later he went aboard ship.