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.
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