Great was Georgie's delight when she got the first letter from her husband. Till now they had never been separated; is it to be wondered at, then, that she locked herself up with the treasure? After the usual protestations and the regulation amount of sentiment, sentiment which, hackneyed though it was, brought ready tears of pleasure into the young wife's eyes, Haggard announced his immediate departure by the mail steamer. "I'm off to-morrow, Georgie," he said, "for I find life in London without you perfectly unbearable. I am hastening my departure that we may the sooner meet again," here followed several sentences of the usual thing. The fact was that Haggard found himself once more a sort of lion in spite of himself, but he also detected a rather chilling reception in many quarters; he was most gushingly received by the least reputable of his lady acquaintances. Mrs. Charmington, in a long _tête-à-tête_ with which she had favoured him, had called him "her hero." But Mrs. Charmington was already on the wane, and as he had no wish to be her hero now he rather fought shy of her. At the Pandemonium he was as popular as ever, rather more so in fact; for since the baccarat affair, particularly as he was away, he had acted as a sort of scapegoat for the sins of the many. It was rather a nuisance, too, to find that wherever he went he excited a considerable amount of attention. Even when seated in the stalls of his favourite theatres, those temples where the sacred lamp of burlesque is so carefully tended, it was annoying to find the glances of all those airily-costumed and magnificently-developed females, who are known as the Lotties and the Totties, concentrated on himself.
He had received no invitation to go down to The Warren, but his father the Justice had written him in no measured terms.
"I had thought," he said, "that by this time you would have got tired of making an ass of yourself; you'd better give old Warrender a wide berth; he is furious."
All these things then tended to make a long stay in town distasteful to Haggard, so he went down to Southampton, took his passage for Mexico in that magnificent steam-ship, the "Capua," and he started, feeling himself an ill-used man.