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The next day Mrs. Mudge, accompanied by her maid and Captain Uffington, crossed the Channel and proceeded by long stages to Switzerland. At the Hôtel Beau Rivage at Ouchy they remained during the summer and autumn months, and only left it to settle down into a pretty quaint old châlet in the neighbourhood of Lausanne. There was the usual three-days' scandal in town, where some laughed, some shrugged their shoulders, and all had a secret delight that Nugent Uffington, of whom, as a popular man, they had naturally been envious, had come to grief. Mr. Alfred Mudge brought an action in the Divorce Court, which he would probably have gained but for the intervention of the Queen's Proctor, who had heard of the petitioner's intimacy with Miss Leggat, an intimacy which had cost Mr. Mudge two or three thousand pounds, which the lady had duly divided with her complacent husband, Mr. Tapps, the leader of the orchestra.

For ten years Julie and Nugent lived in the little Swiss châlet, a guilty life of course, but a thoroughly happy one. They were rich enough to satisfy all their wants, for, in addition to his small income and the price of his commission, she had five hundred a year, and they were devoted to each other. No boy and girl in their first delicious dream, which is never to be renewed, though its every detail haunts our latest memories; no sharers of that bliss beyond all which the minstrel has told; no two who were linked in one heavenly tie--were more all in all to each other than this pair of sinners. The ex-Guardsman was never dull; occasionally he had cheery letters from friends in England telling him of what was going on there; but he knew that on the day of his flight with Julie he had renounced all his old life, and his chief amusement was in shooting and in fishing, of which at most seasons of the year there was abundance in the neighbourhood.