Smyrna times., 1901-10-16
The Gene|0|' 5 Wife.
%9SG GS&

dolhAln, was q NCAy SOOu lOOhlnS lei
low, Captain in the Indian Staff Corps.
and, as Captains in the Staff Corps
sometimes do, thought more of him
self than anybody else.
When home on leave he met the
prettiest, daintiest little girl in Chel-
tenham and for once, finding some one
whom ae could regard as better than
himself, he forgot Jarmin for while
and was genuinely nice. He married |
her. and they came out to India.
Long before five years had passed and
not long after he discovered he was
the father of a child as pretty as her
mother, the old self-esteem had reas-
serted itself, and he thought it quite |
natural, quite within the proper
course of things, that he should have
one of the sweetest women in India for
his wife, and one of the prettiest little
cherubs as a child
1t must be said for Jarmin that he
was a good soldier; but good soldiers
do not always g ct good billets. Jar
min did. That, too, was to him only
natural, but in the good fortune of his
military career he still further failed
to appreciate the good fortune of his
domestic life.
Not that he was inattentive to Mrs.
Jarmin. By no means. Jarmin was a
gentleman. He gave her all the at
tentiOn that a gentleman owes to a
lady. Had he neglected to set a chair
for her when she required one, it would
have worried him all day. He was al
ways courteous-never sympathetic,
rarely tender.
Everything went well, however,
until they came to stay at the Annex,
Bombay, just prior to his proceeding
to Secunderabad as Deputy Assistant
Adiutant General
Then it was that Peach, ofthe Bank,
saw her sitting alone at the table await
ing the arrival of her liege lord. OF
course Peach did not know she had a
liege lord. The idea did not enter his
head. He only saw vision in the
most picturesque pink, and it was
done. He was, AS he would have de-
scribed such circumstance in another
man, "clean bowled." Their eyes met,
and the expression on his face brought
a half smile to her own as she glanced
away.
But in that moment she saw some
thing manly and frank in his counten-
ance which was admired Added tC
this, there was the natural pleasure all
women have in winning admiration
There was no one to talk to, and she
looked again at Peach.
Jarmin came down to dinner full OF
himself as usual, and therefore had
not time to see what was going on. 1
he had, the idea of civilian, who was no
even one of the Civil Service "heaven
borns," coming between himself ant
mis- wife who have appeared too ridic
ulous to be worthy of consideration
Had Peach known she was married h
might probably have saved himsel
earlier. But he persuaded himsel
that the man by her side was only
friend. officers and ladies going hom
or coming from up-country station
sometimes do meet at the hotel in Cal
cutta or Bombay. He was only
friend
By the time he had got to an exam
nation of her fingers from distanC
and saw the wedding ring, it was to
late. He was in love. Though sh
did not know it just then. so wa
she
Had she known it, things might hay
been different, but for the simp
amusement on doing so she contiue
to look occasionally at poor Peac
until his blood was afire and his who
being tingled with a sensation such I
he had never experienced before.
A few days went by, and they we
introduced. Jarmln did not gI'
Peach much thought. He was gil
that his wife had company. 1t saw
him the trouble of extra considerable
SO he played unconsciously for
own ruin and the ruin of two others.
1t was a shock to the young lov
when he found there was child; b
he took that into his calculations ais
and went drifting towards the contra
blindly Indifferent to everything b
the intense happiness of his freque
tete-a-tetes with the woman
seemed to him now to be a necessity
his existence.
Most men are hit that way at
4 time or another; but Peach had
\ particularly bad.
4 Then things reached climax.
n was after dinner. They were slttl