MANY years have passed since my wife and I left the United Statesto pay our first visit to England.

We were provided with letters of introduction, as a matter ofcourse. Among them there was a letter which had been written forus by my wife's brother. It presented us to an English gentlemanwho held a high rank on the list of his old and valued friends.

"You will become acquainted with Mr. George Germaine," mybrother-in-law said, when we took leave of him, "at a veryinteresting period of his life. My last news of him tells me thathe is just married. I know nothing of the lady, or of thecircumstances under which my friend first met with her. But ofthis I am certain: married or single, George Germaine will giveyou and your wife a hearty welcome to England, for my sake."

The day after our arrival in London, we left our letter ofintroduction at the house of Mr. Germaine.

The next morning we went to see a favorite object of Americaninterest, in the metropolis of England--the Tower of London. Thecitizens of the United States find this relic of the good oldtimes of great use in raising their national estimate of thevalue of republican institutions. On getting back to the hotel,the cards of Mr. and Mrs. Germaine told us that they had alreadyreturned our visit. The same evening we received an invitation todine with the newly married couple. It was inclosed in a littlenote from Mrs. Germaine to my wife, warning us that we were notto expect to meet a large party. "It is the first dinner we give,on our return from our wedding tour" (the lady wrote); "and youwill only be introduced to a few of my husband's old friends."

In America, and (as I hear) on the continent of Europe also, whenyour host invites you to dine at a given hour, you pay him thecompliment of arriving punctually at his house. In England alone,the incomprehensible and discourteous custom prevails of keepingthe host and the dinner waiting for half an hour or more--withoutany assignable reason and without any better excuse than thepurely formal apology that is implied in the words, "Sorry to belate."

Arriving at the appointed time at the house of Mr. and Mrs.Germaine, we had every reason to congratulate ourselves on theignorant punctuality which had brought us into the drawing-roomhalf an hour in advance of the other guests.

In the first place, there was so much heartiness, and so littleceremony, in the welcome accorded to us, that we almost fanciedourselves back in our own country. In the second place, bothhusband and wife interested us the moment we set eyes on them.The lady, especially, although she was not, strictly speaking, abeautiful woman, quite fascinated us. There was an artless charmin her face and manner, a simple grace in all her movements, alow, delicious melody in her voice, which we Americans felt to besimply irresistible. And then, it was so plain (and so pleasant)to see that here at least was a happy marriage! Here were twopeople who had all their dearest hopes, wishes, and sympathies incommon--who looked, if I may risk the expression, born to be manand wife. By the time when the fashionable delay of the half hourhad expired, we were talking together as familiarly and asconfidentially as if we had been all four of us old friends.

Eight o'clock struck, and the first of the English guestsappeared.

Having forgotten this gentleman's name, I must beg leave todistinguish him by means of a letter of the alphabet. Let me callhim Mr. A. When he entered the room alone, our host and hostessboth started, and both looked surprised. Apparently they expectedhim to be accompanied by some other person. Mr. Germaine put acurious question to his friend.

"Where is your wife?" he asked.

Mr. A answered for the absent lady by a neat little apology,expressed in these words:

"She has got a bad cold. She is very sorry. She begs me to makeher excuses."

He had just time to deliver his message, before anotherunaccompanied gentleman appeared. Reverting to the letters of thealphabet, let me call him Mr. B. Once more, I noticed that ourhost and hostess started when they saw him enter the room alone.And, rather to my surprise, I heard Mr. Germaine put his curiousquestion again to the new guest:

"Where is your wife?"

The answer--with slight variations--was Mr. A's neat littleapology, repeated by Mr. B.

"I am very sorry. Mrs. B has got a bad headache. She is subjectto bad headaches. She begs me to make her excuses."

Mr. and Mrs. Germaine glanced at one another. The husband's faceplainly expressed the suspicion which this second apology hadroused in his mind. The wife was steady and calm. An intervalpassed--a silent interval. Mr. A and Mr. B retired togetherguiltily into a corner. My wife and I looked at the pictures.

Mrs. Germaine was the first to relieve us from our ownintolerable silence. Two more guests, it appeared, were stillwanting to complete the party. "Shall we have dinner at once,George?" she said to her husband. "Or shall we wait for Mr. andMrs. C?"

"We will wait five minutes," he answered, shortly--with his eyeon Mr. A and Mr. B, guiltily secluded in their corner.

The drawing-room door opened. We all knew that a third marriedlady was expected; we all looked toward the door in unutterableanticipation. Our unexpressed hopes rested silently on thepossible appearance of Mrs. C. Would that admirable, but unknown,woman, at once charm and relieve us by her presence? I shudder asI write it. Mr. C walked into the room--and walked in, _alone_.

Mr. Germaine suddenly varied his formal inquiry in receiving thenew guest.

"Is your wife ill?" he asked.

Mr. C was an elderly man; Mr. C had lived (judging byappearances) in the days when the old-fashioned laws ofpoliteness were still in force. He discovered his two marriedbrethren in their corner, unaccompanied by _their_ wives; and hedelivered his apology for _his_ wife with the air of a man whofelt unaffectedly ashamed of it:

"Mrs. C is so sorry. She has got such a bad cold. She does soregret not being able to accompany me."

At this third apology, Mr. Germaine's indignation forced its wayoutward into expression in words.

"Two bad colds and one bad headache," he said, with ironicalpoliteness. "I don't know how your wives agree, gentlemen, whenthey are well. But when they are ill, their unanimity iswonderful!"

The dinner was announced as that sharp saying passed his lips.

I had the honor of taking Mrs. Germaine to the dining-room. Hersense of the implied insult offered to her by the wives of herhusband's friends only showed itself in a trembling, a veryslight trembling, of the hand that rested on my arm. My interestin her increased tenfold. Only a woman who had been accustomed tosuffer, who had been broken and disciplined to self-restraint,could have endured the moral martyrdom inflicted on her as _this_woman endured it, from the beginning of the evening to the end.

Am I using the language of exaggeration when I write of myhostess in these terms? Look at the circumstances as they strucktwo strangers like my wife and myself.

Here was the first dinner party which Mr. and Mrs. Germaine hadgiven since their marriage. Three of Mr. Germaine's friends, allmarried men, had been invited with their wives to meet Mr.Germaine's wife, and had (evidently) accepted the invitationwithout reserve. What discoveries had taken place between thegiving of the invitation and the giving of the dinner it wasimpossible to say. The one thing plainly discernible was, that inthe interval the three wives had agreed in the resolution toleave their husbands to represent them at Mrs. Germaine's table;and, more amazing still, the husbands had so far approved of thegrossly discourteous conduct of the wives as to consent to makethe most insultingly trivial excuses for their absence. Could anycrueler slur than this have been cast on a woman at the outs etof her married life, before the face of her husband, and in thepresence of two strangers from another country? Is "martyrdom"too big a word to use in describing what a sensitive person musthave suffered, subjected to such treatment as this? Well, I thinknot.

We took our places at the dinner-table. Don't ask me to describethat most miserable of mortal meetings, that weariest anddreariest of human festivals! It is quite bad enough to rememberthat evening--it is indeed.

My wife and I did our best to keep the conversation moving aseasily and as harmlessly as might be. I may say that we reallyworked hard. Nevertheless, our success was not very encouraging.Try as we might to overlook them, there were the three emptyplaces of the three absent women, speaking in their own dismallanguage for themselves. Try as we might to resist it, we allfelt the one sad conclusion which those empty places persisted inforcing on our minds. It was surely too plain that some terriblereport, affecting the character of the unhappy woman at the headof the table, had unexpectedly come to light, and had at one blowdestroyed her position in the estimation of her husband'sfriends. In the face of the excuses in the drawing-room, in theface of the empty places at the dinner-table, what could thefriendliest guests do, to any good purpose, to help the husbandand wife in their sore and sudden need? They could say good-nightat the earliest possible opportunity, and mercifully leave themarried pair to themselves.

Let it at least be recorded to the credit of the three gentlemen,designated in these pages as A, B, and C, that they weresufficiently ashamed of themselves and their wives to be thefirst members of the dinner party who left the house. In a fewminutes more we rose to follow their example. Mrs. Germaineearnestly requested that we would delay our departure.

"Wait a few minutes," she whispered, with a glance at herhusband. "I have something to say to you before you go."

She left us, and, taking Mr. Germaine by the arm, led him away tothe opposite side of the room. The two held a little colloquytogether in low voices. The husband closed the consultation bylifting the wife's hand to his lips.

"Do as you please, my love," he said to her. "I leave it entirelyto you."

He sat down sorrowfully, lost in his thoughts. Mrs. Germaineunlocked a cabinet at the further end of the room, and returnedto us, alone, carrying a small portfolio in her hand.

"No words of mine can tell you how gratefully I feel yourkindness," she said, with perfect simplicity, and with perfectdignity at the same time. "Under very trying circumstances, youhave treated me with the tenderness and the sympathy which youmight have shown to an old friend. The one return I can make forall that I owe to you is to admit you to my fullest confidence,and to leave you to judge for yourselves whether I deserve thetreatment which I have received to-night."

Her eyes filled with tears. She paused to control herself. Weboth begged her to say no more. Her husband, joining us, addedhis entreaties to ours. She thanked us, but she persisted. Likemost sensitively organized persons, she could be resolute whenshe believed that the occasion called for it.

"I have a few words more to say," she resumed, addressing mywife. "You are the only married woman who has come to our littledinner party. The marked absence of the other wives explainsitself. It is not for me to say whether they are right or wrongin refusing to sit at our table. My dear husband--who knows mywhole life as well as I know it myself--expressed the wish thatwe should invite these ladies. He wrongly supposed that _his_estimate of me would be the estimate accepted by his friends; andneither he nor I anticipated that the misfortunes of my past lifewould be revealed by some person acquainted with them, whosetreachery we have yet to discover. The least I can do, by way ofacknowledging your kindness, is to place you in the same positiontoward me which the other ladies now occupy. The circumstancesunder which I have become the wife of Mr. Germaine are, in somerespects, very remarkable. They are related, without suppressionor reserve, in a little narrative which my husband wrote, at thetime of our marriage, for the satisfaction of one of his absentrelatives, whose good opinion he was unwilling to forfeit. Themanuscript is in this portfolio. After what has happened, I askyou both to read it, as a personal favor to me. It is for you todecide, when you know all, whether I am a fit person for anhonest woman to associate with or not."

She held out her hand, with a sweet, sad smile, and bid us goodnight. My wife, in her impulsive way, forgot the formalitiesproper to the occasion, and kissed her at parting. At that onelittle act of sisterly sympathy, the fortitude which the poorcreature had preserved all through the evening gave way in aninstant. She burst into tears.

I felt as fond of her and as sorry for her as my wife. But(unfortunately) I could not take my wife's privilege of kissingher. On our way downstairs, I found the opportunity of saying acheering word to her husband as he accompanied us to the door.

"Before I open this," I remarked, pointing to the portfolio undermy arm, "my mind is made up, sir, about one thing. If I wasn'tmarried already, I tell you this--I should envy you your wife."

He pointed to the portfolio in his turn.

"Read what I have written there," he said; "and you willunderstand what those false friends of mine have made me sufferto-night."

The next morning my wife and I opened the portfolio, and read thestrange story of George Germaine's marriage.