“If I was you, sir,” said Marigold, “I’d keep an eye on that there Mrs. Tufton.”

I instantly annihilated him—­or should have done so had his expressionless face not been made of non-inflammable timber.  He said:  “Very good, sir.”  But there was a damnably ironical and insubordinate look in his one eye.

Gradually the lady lapsed from grace.  She got up late and complained of spasms.  She left dustpan and brush on a patient’s bed.  She wrongfully interfered with the cook, insisting, until she was forcibly ejected from the kitchen, on throwing lettuces into the Irish stew.  Finally, one Sunday afternoon, a policeman wandering through some waste ground, a deserted brickfield behind Flowery End, came upon an unedifying spectacle.  There were madam and an elderly Irish soldier sprawling blissfully comatose with an empty flask of gin and an empty bottle of whisky lying between them.  They were taken to the hospital and put to bed.  The next morning, the lady, being sober, was skummarily dismissed by the matron.  Late at night she rang and battered at the door, clamouring for admittance, which was refused.  Then she went away, apparently composed herself to slumber in the roadway of the pitch-black High Street, and was killed by a motor-car.  And that, bar the funeral, was the end of Mrs. Tufton.

From her bereaved husband, with whom I at once communicated, I received the following reply: 

“Dear Sir,

“Yours to hand announcing the accidental death of my wife, which I need not say I deeply regret.  You will be interested to hear that I have been offered a commission in the Royal Fusiliers, which I am now able to accept.  In view of the same, any expense to which you may be put to give my late wife honourable burial, I shall be most ready to defray.

“With many thanks for your kindness in informing me of this unfortunate circumstance,

“I am,

“Yours faithfully,

“John P. Tufton.”

“I think he’s a horrid, callous, cold-blooded fellow!” cried Betty when I showed her this epistle.

“After all,” said I, “she wasn’t a model wife.  If the fatal motor-car hadn’t come along, the probability is that she would have received poor Tufton on his next leave with something even more deadly than a poker.  Now and again the Fates have brilliant inspirations.  This was one of them.  Now, you see the virago-clogged Tufton is a free man, able to accept a commission and start a new life as an officer and a gentleman.”

“I think you’re perfectly odious.  Odious and cynical,” she exclaimed wrathfully.

“I think,” said I, “that a living warrior is better than a dead—­ Disappointment.”

“You don’t understand,” she stormed.  “If I didn’t love you, I could rend you to pieces.”

“It is because I do understand, my dear,” said I, enjoying the flashing beauty of her return to Artemisian attitudes, “that I particularly characterised the dear lady as a disappointment.”