who was with her seemed very angry at not being permitted immediate
access to the theatre; but reference had to be made to another
official, and in the mean time he stepped by to let the Rosemount
party pass; in doing so he presented under the bright flare of the
gaslight his full face, the full face of Mr. Alfred Mudge, who,
instead of carousing with carnival Bellowsmenders, was acting
as escort to the notorious Miss Leggat of the Theatre Royal,
Hatton-garden.
The next day Mrs. Mudge, accompanied by her maid and Captain
Uffington, crossed the Channel and proceeded by long stages to
Switzerland. At the Hôtel Beau Rivage at Ouchy they remained during
the summer and autumn months, and only left it to settle down into a
pretty quaint old châlet in the neighbourhood of Lausanne. There was
the usual three-days' scandal in town, where some laughed, some
shrugged their shoulders, and all had a secret delight that Nugent
Uffington, of whom, as a popular man, they had naturally been envious,
had come to grief. Mr. Alfred Mudge brought an action in the Divorce
Court, which he would probably have gained but for the intervention of
the Queen's Proctor, who had heard of the petitioner's intimacy with
Miss Leggat, an intimacy which had cost Mr. Mudge two or three
thousand pounds, which the lady had duly divided with her complacent
husband, Mr. Tapps, the leader of the orchestra.
For ten years Julie and Nugent lived in the little Swiss châlet, a
guilty life of course, but a thoroughly happy one. They were rich
enough to satisfy all their wants, for, in addition to his small
income and the price of his commission, she had five hundred a year,
and they were devoted to each other. No boy and girl in their first
delicious dream, which is never to be renewed, though its every detail
haunts our latest memories; no sharers of that bliss beyond all which
the minstrel has told; no two who were linked in one heavenly
tie--were more all in all to each other than this pair of sinners. The
ex-Guardsman was never dull; occasionally he had cheery letters from
friends in England telling him of what was going on there; but he knew
that on the day of his flight with Julie he had renounced all his old
life, and his chief amusement was in shooting and in fishing, of which
at most seasons of the year there was abundance in the neighbourhood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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