Explore "The Traitor's Gate" by Edgar Wallace on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A GREAT REGIMENT has great traditions, and one of the traditions of the Berwick Guards had to do with the eligibility of its officers' wives. No officer might marry an actress, however charming and popular, and remain on the Active List. Bobbie Longfellow, who had been dining en famille with Colonel the Honourable john Ruislip and his wife, returned to his quarters in a somewhat chastened mood; for if the genial commander of the Berwick Guards took a somewhat lax view on the subject of eligibility, his austere wife (the third daughter of the Earl of Stanfield) supplied his deficiencies. Bobbie, despite his youth, had a shrewd idea of worldly things, and because her ladyship had dropped a hint about the propriety of subalterns marrying out of their class, and particularly by reason of the fact that her comment had some special application, Mr. Longfellow was just a little uneasy.
"The first essential to a successful marriage is Family," said her ladyship, fingering the big emerald ring that decorated her little finger. "If a gel hasn't Family, the marriage is a mistake." A thin-lipped, spare and beautiful woman, she was never quite so definite as when she was twirling that big emerald about a finger just a little too small for it.