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The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor

away and explain afterwards.

I hadn’t been at the table ten minutes before I saw Frank out of the window at the other side of the road. He beckoned to me and then began walking into the Park. I slipped out, put on my things, and followed him. Some woman came talking something or other about Lord St. Simon to me⁠—seemed to me from the little I heard as if he had a little secret of his own before marriage also⁠—but I managed to get away from her and soon overtook Frank.

We got into a cab together, and away we drove to some lodgings he had taken in Gordon Square, and that was my true wedding after all those years of waiting. Frank had been a prisoner among the Apaches, had escaped, came on to ’Frisco, found that I had given him up for dead and had gone to England, followed me there, and had come upon me at last on the very morning of my second wedding.”

“I saw it in a paper,” explained the American. “It gave the name and the church but not where the lady lived.”

“Then we had a talk as to what we should do, and Frank was all for openness, but I was so ashamed of it all that I felt as if I should like to vanish away and never see any of them again⁠—just sending a line to Pa, perhaps, to show him that I was alive.

It was awful to me to think of all those lords and ladies sitting round that breakfast-table and waiting for me to come back. So Frank took my wedding-clothes and things and made

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