There were days when I
thought of writing to Hugh Vereker and simply throwing myself on
his charity. But I felt more deeply that I hadn't fallen quite so
low--besides which, quite properly, he would send me about my
business. Mrs. Erme's death brought Corvick straight home, and
within the month he was united "very quietly"--as quietly, I seemed
to make out, as he meant in his article to bring out his
trouvaille--to the young lady he had loved and quitted. I use this
last term, I may parenthetically say, because I subsequently grew
sure that at the time he went to India, at the time of his great
news from Bombay, there had been no positive pledge between them
whatever. There had been none at the moment she was affirming to
me the very opposite. On the other hand he had certainly become
engaged the day he returned. The happy pair went down to Torquay
for their honeymoon, and there, in a reckless hour, it occurred to
poor Corvick to take his young bride a drive. He had no command of
that business: this had been brought home to me of old in a little
tour we had once made together in a dogcart. In a dogcart he
perched his companion for a rattle over Devonshire hills, on one of
the likeliest of which he brought his horse, who, it was true, had
bolted, down with such violence that the occupants of the cart were
hurled forward and that he fell horribly on his head.
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