the world. Supposing he had spent his seven years in Winchester
Gaol or whatever it is that inscrutable and blind justice allots to
you for following your natural but ill-timed inclinations--there
would have arrived a stage when nodding gossips on the Kursaal
terrace would have said, "Poor fellow," thinking of his ruined
career. He would have been the fine soldier with his back now
bent. . . . Better for him, poor devil, if his back had been
prematurely bent.

Why, it would have been a thousand times better. . . . For, of
course, the Kilsyte case, which came at the very beginning of his
finding Leonora cold and unsympathetic, gave him a nasty jar. He
left servants alone after that.

It turned him, naturally, all the more loose amongst women of his
own class. Why, Leonora told me that Mrs Maidan--the woman he
followed from Burma to Nauheim--assured her he awakened her
attention by swearing that when he kissed the servant in the train
he was driven to it. I daresay he was driven to it, by the mad
passion to find an ultimately satisfying woman. I daresay he was
sincere enough. Heaven help me, I daresay he was sincere enough
in his love for Mrs Maidan. She was a nice little thing, a dear little
dark woman with long lashes, of whom Florence grew quite fond.
She had a lisp and a happy smile. We saw plenty of her for the
first month of our acquaintance, then she died, quite quietly--of
heart trouble.

But you know, poor little Mrs Maidan--she was so gentle, so
young. She cannot have been more than twenty-three and she had
a boy husband out in Chitral not more than twenty-four, I believe.