"Two days before the--the ceremony! Mercifully it had all been kept very
quiet, because it was only three months since poor Gilly was killed. I
forget whether you ever met Gilly? My half-brother, you know?"

"Only once--in Collingham Gardens. He had an _exeat_, and dashed in one
Saturday morning when we were just finishing our work. Don't you
remember?"

"Yes, I think I do. But since my engagement I'd gone into colors. Oh, of
course I've gone back into mourning now! And everything was
ready--settlements and so on, you know. And rooms taken at Bournemouth.
And then it all came out!"

"How?"

"Well, Eustace--Captain Cranster, I mean. Oh, I think he really must have
had shell-shock, as he said, even though the doctor seemed to doubt it!
He gave the Colonel as a reference in some shop, and--and the bank
wouldn't pay the check. Other checks turned up, too, and in the end the
police went through his papers, and found letters from--well, from her,
you know. From Bogota. South America, isn't it? He'd lived there ten
years, you know, growing something--beans, or coffee, or coffee-beans, or
something--I don't know what. He tried to say the marriage wasn't
binding, but the Colonel--wasn't it providential that the Colonel was
home on leave? Mamma could never have grappled with it! The Colonel was
sure it was, and so were the lawyers."

"What happened then?"

"The great thing was to keep it quiet. Now, wasn't it? And there was the