When a man with the constitution of Montague Dartie has exercised self-control for months from religious motives, and remains unrewarded, he does not curse God and die, he curses God and lives, to the distress of his family.

Winifred⁠—a plucky woman, if a little too fashionable⁠—who had borne the brunt of him for exactly twenty-one years, had never really believed that he would do what he now did. Like so many wives, she thought she knew the worst, but she had not yet known him in his forty-fifth year, when he, like other men, felt that it was now or never. Paying on the 2nd of October a visit of inspection to her jewel case, she was horrified to observe that her woman’s crown and glory was gone⁠—the pearls which Montague had given her in ’86, when Benedict was born, and which James had been compelled to pay for in the spring of ’87, to save scandal. She consulted her husband at once. He pooh-poohed the matter. They would turn up! Nor till she said sharply: “Very well, then, Monty, I shall go down to Scotland Yard myself