“Some months after Andrew’s arrival with his regiment at Quebec, he became acquainted with a woman of great personal attractions, who came, or said she came, from one of the Southern States of America.  She obtained an immediate influence over him; and she used it to the basest purpose.  You knew the easy, affectionate, trusting nature of the man in later life—­you can imagine how thoughtlessly he acted on the impulse of his youth.  It is useless to dwell on this lamentable part of the story.  He was just twenty-one:  he was blindly devoted to a worthless woman; and she led him on, with merciless cunning, till it was too late to draw back.  In one word, he committed the fatal error of his life:  he married her.

“She had been wise enough in her own interests to dread the influence of his brother-officers, and to persuade him, up to the period of the marriage ceremony, to keep the proposed union between them a secret.  She could do this; but she could not provide against the results of accident.  Hardly three months had passed, when a chance disclosure exposed the life she had led before her marriage.  But one alternative was left to her husband—­the alternative of instantly separating from her.

“The effect of the discovery on the unhappy boy—­for a boy in disposition he still was—­may be judged by the event which followed the exposure.  One of Andrew’s superior officers—­a certain Major Kirke, if I remember right—­found him in his quarters, writing to his father a confession of the disgraceful truth, with a loaded pistol by his side.  That officer saved the lad’s life from his own hand, and hushed up the scandalous affair by a compromise.  The marriage being a perfectly legal one, and the wife’s misconduct prior to the ceremony giving her husband no claim to his release from her by divorce, it was only possible to appeal to her sense of her own interests.  A handsome annual allowance was secured to her, on condition that she returned to the place from which she had come; that she never appeared in England; and that she ceased to use her husband’s name.  Other stipulations were added to these.  She accepted them all; and measures were privately taken to have her well looked after in the place of her retreat.  What life she led there, and whether she performed all the conditions imposed on her, I cannot say.  I can only tell you that she never, to my knowledge, came to England; that she never annoyed Mr. Vanstone; and that the annual allowance was paid her, through a local agent in America, to the day of her death.  All that she wanted in marrying him was money; and money she got.

“In the meantime, Andrew had left the regiment.  Nothing would induce him to face his brother-officers after what had happened.  He sold out and returned to England.  The first intelligence which reached him on his return was the intelligence of his father’s death.  He came to my office in London, before going home, and there learned from my lips how the family quarrel had ended.