Love Among the Lions: A Matrimonial Experience

"Not at all. I can never be grateful enough to you!"

"Grateful! Then do you mean to say you prefer that coarse, middle-aged, lion-taming person to me, Theodore?"

"Lurana," I said, "prepare yourself for a great surprise – a pleasant surprise. If anybody is now that lady's lawful husband it is Niono – not I; and a very suitable match too," I added (I saw now why the authorities had been compelled to waive their objections to it). "The fact is, I never went into the cage at all."

"You didn't go into the cage, Theodore! but how, why?"

"Do you imagine," I asked, "can you really suppose I should be capable of entering that cage with anybody but yourself, Lurana? How little you know me! Of course I declined!"

"But you didn't know I had run away then, Theodore! Why, you thought only a few minutes ago I was the person Mr Niono married! Perhaps you will kindly explain?"

For the moment I was in a fix, but I saw that the moment had arrived for perfect candour, and accordingly I told her the facts pretty much as they have been set down here.

She could hardly blame me for having behaved precisely as she herself had done, or refuse to admit that by taking any other course I should have imperilled our joint happiness, and yet I thought I could see that, with feminine unreason, she was just a little disappointed with me.

The true explanation of that marriage, if it was a marriage, in the den of lions, I have never been able to discover, nor for that matter have I been particularly curious to inquire whether Onion attempted to get rid of me in order to secure Lurana; whether Mdlle. Léonie played upon Lurana's fears with the hope of becoming my bride, or his; or whether the Lion King and his fellow artist gallantly sacrificed themselves to get the management out of a difficulty, I don't know, and, as I say, I haven't cared to ask.

But however it was, they were ably seconded by old Polkinghorne, who was naturally unwilling to be called upon to refund the money he had got for his free tickets, and by Miss Rakestraw and Archibald Chuck, whose reputations were also more or less concerned.

Nevertheless, although every effort was made to keep the public off the scent, and the circus people behaved, I am bound to say, with commendable discretion, sundry garbled versions of the facts did get about, and altogether Lurana and I have found the task of denying or correcting them such a constant nuisance that I have felt compelled, as I said at starting, to furnish, once for all, a statement of what actually occurred.

Now that it is written I have no more to add, except to append a cutting from an announcement which appeared not long ago in the principal papers. The arrangements for its publication were entrusted to Archibald Chuck, who I think must have added the last two words on his own responsibility.

Blenkinsop — De Castro. – On the 15th inst., at the Parish Church of St Mary, Islington, by the Rev. Merton Sandford, D.D., Vicar, Theodore Pidgley Blenkinsop, of Highbury, to Lurana Carmen de Castro, only daughter of the late Manuel Guzman de Castro, formerly Deputy Sub-Assistant Inspector of Spanish Liquorice to the Government Manufactory at Madrid. No lions.

THE END