David Wells - Her Ladyship's Elephant

"How has this dreadful thing happened?" demanded Mrs. Scarsdale, in a voice quavering with suppressed emotion.

"I'm afraid it's my fault," said Allingford ruefully. "The guard told me we had ten minutes."

"That was for your division of the train, stupid!" exclaimed the lady wrathfully.

"I didn't know that," explained the Consul, "and so I told your husband we had ten minutes, which probably accounts for his being left."

"Then I'll never, never forgive you," she cried, and burst into tears, murmuring between her sobs: "Poor, dear Harold! what will he do?"

"Do!" exclaimed the Consul, "I should think he had done enough, in all conscience. Why, confound him, he's gone off with my wife!"

"Don't you call my husband names!" sobbed Mrs. Scarsdale.

"Well, he certainly has enough of his own, that's a fact."

"If you were a man," retorted the disconsolate bride, "you would do something, instead of making stupid jokes about my poor Stanley. I'm a distressed American citizen – "

"No, you're not; you became a British subject when you married Scarsdale," corrected Allingford.

"Well, I won't be, so there! I tell you I'm an American woman in distress, and you are my Consul and you've got to help me."

"I'll help you with the greatest pleasure in the world. I'm quite as anxious to recover my wife as you can be to find your husband."

"Then what do you advise?" she asked.

"We are going somewhere at a rapid rate," he replied. "When we arrive, we will leave the train and return to Basingstoke as soon as possible. Now do you happen to know our next stop?"

"Yes: Salisbury."

"How long before we get there?"

"About three quarters of an hour."

"That will at least give us time," he said, "to consider what is best to be done. Have you a railway guide?"

"I think there is a South Western time-table in the pocket of dear Malcolm's coat," she said, indicating a garment on the seat beside her.

"Why don't you call him St. Hubart and be done with it?" queried Allingford, as he searched for and found the desired paper. "You've given him all his other names."

"I reserve that for important occasions," she replied; "it sounds so impressive."

Mabel Scarsdale, it will be noticed, was fast regaining her composure, now that a definite course of action had been determined upon. But she could not help feeling depressed, for it must be admitted that it is disheartening to lose your husband before you have been married a day. What would he do, she wondered, when he found that the train had gone? Had he discovered its departure soon enough to warn Mrs. Allingford to leave her carriage? and if not, where had she gone, and had he accompanied her? The event certainly afforded ample grounds for speculation; but her reverie was interrupted by the Consul, who had been deeply immersed in the time-table.

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