extraordinary notice he took of it when his wife was not present. Not
that Richard Joseph Armour, Jun., was always en evidence, but when asked
for by his faithful friends and admirers he was amiably produced.

Meanwhile, Frank Armour across the sea was engaged with many things.
His business concerns had not prospered prodigiously, chiefly because his
judgment, like his temper, had grown somewhat uncertain. His popularity
in the Hudson's Bay country had been at some tension since he had shipped
his wife away to England. Even the ordinary savage mind saw something
unusual and undomestic in it, and the general hospitality declined a
little. Armour did not immediately guess the cause; but one day, about a
year after his wife had gone, he found occasion to reprove a half-breed,
by name Jacques Pontiac; and Jacques, with more honesty than politeness,
said some hard words, and asked how much he paid for his English hired
devils to kill his wife. Strange to say, he did not resent this
startling remark. It set him thinking. He began to blame himself for
not having written oftener to his people--and to his wife. He wondered
how far his revenge had succeeded. He was most ashamed of it now. He
knew that he had done a dishonourable thing. The more he thought upon
it the more angry with himself he became. Yet he dreaded to go back to
England and face it all: the reproach of his people; the amusement of
society; his wife herself. He never attempted to picture her as a
civilised being. He scarcely knew her when he married her. She knew
him much better, for primitive people are quicker in the play of their
passions, and she had come to love him before he had begun to notice
her at all.

Presently he ate his heart out with mortification. To be yoked for ever
to--a savage! It was horrible. And their children? It was strange he
had not thought of that before. Children? He shrugged his shoulders.