It was the announcement of the marriage of Mordaunt Prince at the British
Consulate in Naples.

The unutterable perfidy of man! For the first time in his guileless life
Septimus met it face to face. To read of human depravity in the police
reports is one thing, to see it fall like a black shadow across one's life
is another. It horrified him. Mordaunt Prince had committed the
unforgivable sin. He had stolen a girl's love, and basely, meanly, he had
slunk off, deceiving her to the last. To Septimus the lover who kissed and
rode away had ever appeared a despicable figure of romance. The fellow who
did it in real life proclaimed himself an unconscionable scoundrel. The
memory of Emmy's forget-me-not blue eyes turning into sapphires as she sang
the villain's praises smote him. He clenched his fists and put to
incoherent use his limited vocabulary of anathema. Then fearing, in his
excited state, to meet Zora, lest he should betray the miserable secret, he
stuffed the newspaper into his pocket, and crept out of the house.

Before his own fire he puzzled over the problem. Something must be done.
But what? Hale Mordaunt Prince from his bride's arms and bring him penitent
to Nunsmere? What would be the good of that, seeing that polygamy is not
openly sanctioned by Western civilization? Proceed to Naples and chastise
him? That were better. The monster deserved it. But how are men chastised?
Septimus had no experience. He reflected vaguely that people did this sort
of thing with a horsewhip. He speculated on the kind of horsewhip that
would be necessary. A hunting crop with no lash would not be more effective
than an ordinary walking stick. With a lash it would be cumbrous, unless he
kept at an undignified distance and flicked at his victim as the
ring-master in the circus flicks at the clown. Perhaps horsewhips for this
particular purpose could be obtained from the Army and Navy Stores. It