As the door slammed behind
them, the draught caught the ticket and note, and in a moment they
were in the flames and consumed.
Ten minutes afterwards in came Zachariah. He had run all the way,
and was dripping with perspiration. He rushed upstairs, but there
was nobody. He stared round him, looked at the plates, saw that two
had been there, rushed down again, and asked the woman in the shop:
"Has Mrs. Coleman left any message?"
"No. She went off with that gentleman that comes here now and then;
but she never said nothing to me," and Zachariah thought he saw
something like a grin on her face.
It may be as well to say that he never dreamed of any real injury
done to him by his wife, and, in truth, the Major was incapable of
doing him any. He was gay, unorthodox, a man who went about in the
world, romantic, republican, but he never would have condescended to
seduce a woman, and least of all a woman belonging to a friend. He
paid women whom he admired all kinds of attentions, but they were
nothing more than the gallantry of the age. Although they were
nothing, however, to him, they were a good deal more than nothing to
Mrs. Zachariah.
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