being some day citizens of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall

be a quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes.”


“The case has been an interesting one,” remarked Holmes when our

visitors had left us, “because it serves to show very clearly how simple

the explanation may be of an affair which at first sight seems to be almost

inexplicable. Nothing could be more natural than the sequence of events as

narrated by this lady, and nothing stranger than the result when viewed, for

instance, by Mr. Lestrade of Scotland Yard.”


“You were not yourself at fault at all, then?”


“From the first, two facts were very obvious to me, the one that the lady

had been quite willing to undergo the wedding ceremony, the other that she had

repented of it within a few minutes of returning home. Obviously something had

occurred during the morning, then, to cause her to change her mind. What could

that something be? She could not have spoken to anyone when she was out, for

she had been in the company of the bridegroom. Had she seen someone, then? If

she had, it must be someone from America because she had spent so short a time

in this country that she could hardly have allowed anyone to acquire so deep an

influence over her that the mere sight of him would induce her to change her

plans so completely. You see we have already arrived, by a process of

exclusion, at the idea that she might have seen an American. Then who could

this American be, and why should he possess so much influence over her? It

might be a lover; it might be a husband. Her young womanhood had, I knew, been

spent in rough scenes and under strange conditions. So far I had got before I

ever heard Lord St. Simon’s narrative. When he told us of a man in a pew,

of the change in the bride’s manner, of so transparent a device for

obtaining a note as the dropping of a bouquet, of her resort to her

confidential maid, and of her very significant allusion to