MAN AND WIFE

by Wilkie Collins




PROLOGUE.--THE IRISH MARRIAGE.



Part the First.



THE VILLA AT HAMPSTEAD.

I.

ON a summer's morning, between thirty and forty years ago, two girls
were crying bitterly in the cabin of an East Indian passenger ship,
bound outward, from Gravesend to Bombay.

They were both of the same age--eighteen. They had both, from childhood
upward, been close and dear friends at the same school. They were now
parting for the first time--and parting, it might be, for life.

The name of one was Blanche. The name of the other was Anne.

Both were the children of poor parents, both had been pupil-teachers at