The Man was in the Plains, earning money for his Wife to spend
on dresses and four-hundred-rupee bracelets, and inexpensive
luxuries of that kind. He worked very hard, and sent her a letter or
a post-card daily. She also wrote to him daily, and said that she
was longing for him to come up to Simla. The Tertium Quid used
to lean over her shoulder and laugh as she wrote the notes. Then
the two would ride to the Post-office together.

Now, Simla is a strange place and its customs are peculiar; nor is
any man who has not spent at least ten seasons there qualified to
pass judgment on circumstantial evidence, which is the most
untrustworthy in the Courts. For these reasons, and for others
which need not appear, I decline to state positively whether there
was anything irretrievably wrong in the relations between the
Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid. If there was, and hereon you
must form your own opinion, it was the Man's Wife's fault. She
was kittenish in her manners, wearing generally an air of soft and
fluffy innocence. But she was deadlily learned and evil-instructed;
and, now and again, when the mask dropped, men saw this,
shuddered and almost drew back. Men are occasionally particular,
and the least particular men are always the most exacting.

Simla is eccentric in its fashion of treating friendships. Certain
attachments which have set and crystallised through half-a-dozen
seasons acquire almost the sanctity of the marriage bond, and are
revered as such. Again, certain attachments equally old, and, to all
appearance, equally venerable, never seem to win any recognised
official status; while a chance-sprung acquaintance, not two
months born, steps into the place which by right belongs to the
senior. There is no law reducible to print which regulates these