Clara Hopgood

But his wife would perhaps survive him, and the discovery would cause

her and her children much misery; it would damage his character with

them and inflict positive moral mischief. The will, therefore, did

not mention Madge, and it was not necessary to tell his secret to his

solicitor.

The wedding took place amidst much rejoicing; everybody thought the

couple were most delightfully matched; the presents were magnificent;

the happy pair went to Switzerland, came back and settled in one of

the smaller of the old, red brick houses in Stoke Newington, with a

lawn in front, always shaved and trimmed to the last degree of

smoothness and accuracy, with paths on whose gravel not the smallest

weed was ever seen, and with a hot-house that provided the most

luscious black grapes. There was a grand piano in the drawing-room,

and Frank and Cecilia became more musical than ever, and Waltham

Lodge was the headquarters of a little amateur orchestra which

practised Mozart and Haydn, and gave local concerts. A twelvemonth

after the marriage a son was born and Frank's father increased

Frank's share in the business. Mr Palmer had long ceased to take any

interest in the Hopgoods. He considered that Madge had treated Frank

shamefully in jilting him, but was convinced that he was fortunate in

his escape. It was clear that she was unstable; she probably threw

him overboard for somebody more attractive, and she was not the woman

to be a wife to his son.

One day Cecilia was turning out some drawers belonging to her

husband, and she found a dainty little slipper wrapped up in white

tissue paper. She looked at it for a long time, wondering to whom it

could have belonged, and had half a mind to announce her discovery to

Frank, but she was a wise woman and forbore. It lay underneath some

neckties which were not now worn, two or three silk pocket

handkerchiefs also discarded, and some manuscript books containing

school themes. She placed them on the top of the drawers as if they

had all been taken out in a lump and the slipper was at the bottom.

'Frank my dear,' she said after dinner, 'I emptied this morning one

of the drawers in the attic. I wish you would look over the things

and decide what you wish to keep. I have not examined them, but they

seem to be mostly rubbish.'

He went upstairs after he had smoked his cigar and read his paper.

There was the slipper! It all came back to him, that never-to-be-

forgotten night, when she rebuked him for the folly of kissing her

foot, and he begged the slipper and determined to preserve it for

ever, and thought how delightful it would be to take it out and look

at it when he was an old man. Even now he did not like to destroy

it, but Cecilia might have seen it and might ask him what he had done

with it, and what could he say? Finally he decided to burn it.

There was no fire, however, in the room, and while he stood

meditating, Cecilia called him. He replaced the slipper in the

drawer. He could not return that evening, but he intended to go back

the next morning, take the little parcel away in his pocket and burn

it at his office. At breakfast some letters came which put

everything else out of mind. The first thing he did that evening was

to revisit the garret, but the slipper had gone. Cecilia had been

there and had found it carefully folded up in the drawer. She pulled

it out, snipped and tore it into fifty pieces, carried them

downstairs, threw them on the dining-room fire, sat down before it,

poking them further and further into the flames, and watched them

till every vestige had vanished. Frank did not like to make any

inquiries; Cecilia made none, and thence-forward no trace existed at

Waltham Lodge of Madge Hopgood.