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.