"The ham sandwiches!" exclaimed I, and they nearly choked me. "I 'm going to be shot for a woman that, in the very extremity of her ruin, has the heart to order ham sandwiches!" That was the reflection that arose to my mind, and can you fancy a more bitter one?
"Are you sure," asked I, "the sandwiches weren't for Madame Virginie, or the little dog?"
"They might, sir, but my Lady desired us to be sure and put plenty of mustard on them."
This was the damning circumstance, Tom. She was fond of mustard,--I had often remarked it; and just see, now, on what a trivial thing a man's happiness can hang. For I own to you, so long as I was strong in what I fancied to be her good graces, I could have fought the whole regiment of Blues; but when I thought to myself, "She doesn't care a brass farthing for you, Kenny Dodd; she may be laughing at you this minute over the ham sandwiches,"--I felt like a drowning man that had nothing to grapple on. Talk of unhappy and injured men, indeed! Wasn't I in that category myself? Not even a husband's selfishness could dispute the palm of misery with _me!_ In the matter of desertion we were both in the same boat, and for the life of me, I don't see what we could have to fight about. I never heard of two sailors rescued from shipwreck quarrelling as to who it was lost the vessel!
"The best thing for us to do," thought I, "would be to try and console each other; and if he be a sensible, good-hearted fellow, he 'll maybe take the same view of it. I 'll ask him and my Lord to dinner; I'll make the landlord give us some of that wonderful old Stein berger that was bottled three hundred years ago; I 'll treat them to a regular Saxon dish of venison with capers washed down with Marcobrunner, and if we 're not brothers before morning, my name is n't Kenny Dodd."
I was on "these hospitable thoughts intent," when Lord Harvey Bruce was again announced. He had found out an old sergeant-major of artillery, who for a consideration would undertake the duties of my second,--kindly adding that he and his family, a very large one, would also attend my obsequies.
I interrupted his Lordship to remark that an event bad just occurred to modify the circumstances of the case, and mentioned Mrs. Gore Hampton's departure.