from some such misery as had come to him through Julia Sherwood. It was
a dispassionate, manly letter, relieved by gentle wit, and hinting with
careful kindness that a sudden blow was better for a man than a lifelong
thorn in his side. Of Julia Sherwood he had nothing particularly bitter
to say. He delicately suggested that she had acted according to her
nature, and that in the see-saw of life Frank had had a sore blow; but
this was to be borne. The letter did not say too much; it did not
magnify the difficulty, it did not depreciate it. It did not even
directly counsel; it was wholesomely, tenderly judicial. Indirectly, it
dwelt upon the steadiness and manliness of Frank's character; directly,
lightly, and without rhetoric, it enlarged upon their own comradeship.
It ran over pleasantly the days of their boyhood, when they were hardly
ever separated. It made distinct, yet with no obvious purpose, how good
were friendship and confidence--which might be the most unselfish thing
in the world--between two men. With the letter before him Frank Armour
saw his act in a new light.

As we said, it is possible if he had read it on the day when his trouble
came to him, he had not married Lali, or sent her to England on this--to
her--involuntary mission of revenge. It is possible, also, that there
came to him the first vague conception of the wrong he had done this
Indian girl, who undoubtedly married him because she cared for him after
her heathen fashion, while he had married her for nothing that was
commendable; not even for passion, which may be pardoned, nor for
vanity, which has its virtues. He had had his hour with circumstance;
circumstance would have its hour with him in due course. Yet there was
no extraordinary revulsion. He was still angry, cynical, and very sore.
He would see the play out with a consistent firmness. He almost managed
a smile when a letter was handed to him some weeks later, bearing his
solicitor's assurance that Mrs. Frank Armour and her maid had been safely