"
You may even now see such an one, I say, and hear him too, if you will
but go to Burleigh; seeing he has by this time over-lived the year or so
whereof our tale discourses. He has, by dint of service, attained to the
dignity of General H.E.I.C.S., and--which he was still longer coming
to--the wisdom of being a communicative creature; though possibly, by a
natural reaction, at present he carries anti-secresy a little too far,
and verges on the gossiping extreme. But, at the time to which we must
look back to commence this right-instructive story, General Tracy was
still drinking "Hodgson's Pale" in India, was so taciturn as to be
considered almost dumb, and had not yet lifted up his yellow visage upon
Albion's white cliffs, nor taken up head-quarters in his final rest of
Burleigh-Singleton.
Nevertheless, with reference to quartering at Burleigh, a certain
long-neglected wife of his, Mrs. Tracy, had; and that for the period of
at least the twenty-one years preceding: how and wherefore I proceed to
tell.
A common case and common fate was that of Mrs. Tracy. She had married,
both early and hastily, a gallant lieutenant, John George Julian Tracy,
to wit, the military germ of our future general; their courtship and
acquaintance previous to matrimony extended over the not inconsiderable
space of three whole weeks--commencing with a country ball; and after
marriage, honey-moon inclusive, they lived the life of cooing doves for
three whole months.
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