"Of course he might, my dear! Where else would be the fun of it? Without that the thing would be no better than this shooting of pigeons and pheasants by men who would drop their guns if a cock were to fly in their faces. You _had_ to kill him, you know! He's first cousin--the man-eating, or rather woman-eating tiger, to a sort that I understand abounds in the Zoological Gardens called English society; if the woman be poor, he devours her at once; if she be rich he marries her, and eats her slowly up at his ease in his den." "How with the black wife!" thought Mr. Raymount, who had been little more than listening. But Mr. Raymount did not really know anything about that part of his old friend's history; it was hardly to his discredit. The black wife, as he called her, was the daughter of an English merchant by a Hindoo wife, a young creature when he first made her acquaintance, unaware of her own power, and kept almost in slavery by the relatives of her deceased father, who had left her all his property. Major Marvel made her acquaintance and became interested in her through a devilish attempt to lay the death of her father to her door. I believe the shine of her gold had actually blinded her relatives into imagining, I can hardly say _believing_ her guilty. The major had taken her part and been of the greatest service to her. She was entirely acquitted. But although nobody believed her in the smallest degree guilty, _society_ looked askance upon her. True, she was rich, but was she not black? and had she not been accused of a crime? And who saw her father and mother married? Then said the major to himself--"Here am I a useless old fellow, living for nobody but myself! It would make one life at least happier if I took the poor thing home with me. She's rather too old, and I'm rather too young to adopt her; but I daresay she would marry me. She has a trifle I believe that would eke out my pay, and help us to live decently!" He did not know then that she had more than a very moderate income, but it turned out to be a very large fortune indeed when he came to inquire into things. That the major rejoiced over his fortune, I do not doubt; but that he would have been other than an honorable husband had he found she had nothing, I entirely disbelieve. When she left him the widowed father of a little girl, he mourned sincerely for her. When the child followed her mother, he was for some time a sad man indeed. Then, as if her money was all he had left of her, and he must lead what was left of his life in its company, he went heartily into speculation with it, and at least doubled the fortune she brought him. He had now returned to his country to find almost every one of his old friends dead, or so changed as to make them all but dead to him. Little as any one would have imagined it from his conversation or manner, it was with a kind of heart-despair that he sought the cousin he had loved. And scarcely had