First published in the April 1892 issue of The Strand Magazine

First published in a collection in 1892 in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

 

Characters: Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson, Lord Robert St. Simon, Hatty Doran, Flora Miller, Francis Hay Moulton

Case Date: October 1886 to 1888

 

Storyline:

"I had formed my conclusions as to the case before our client came into the room," Holmes is able to tell an astonished Watson. But even a foregone conclusion, and the pompousness of Lord St Simon, cannot deter him from following up the incident of a nobleman deserted at his wedding reception by his rich American bride, Hatty Doran. The police, too, have drawn their conclusion-that she had been decoyed away by a former recipient of his lordship’s condescension, Flora Millar, whose ejection had been an earlier feature of the ill-fated festivities. But Holmes’s thoughts are upon the business with the bouquet, the man in the front pew, and a receipt from one of the few London hotels exclusive enough to ask, and get, eight shillings for a bed and half a crown for breakfast.
If, having been provided with a solution, the English aristocrat will not sit down to a celebratory supper, the 'common-looking' American will, moving Holmes to remark: "It is always a joy to me to meet an American, Mr. Moulton, for I am one of those who believe that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a Minister in far-gone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide community under a flag which shall be the quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes."