"The Episode of the Hired Past" is a short story by P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill, which first appeared in the United Kingdom in the September 1914 issue of the Strand, and in the United States in the October 1916 Pictorial Review. It was published in book form in the collection A Man of Means in 1991.
It is the last of six stories to feature Roland Bleke, a young man for whom financial success is always a mixed blessing.
Plot summary
Roland Bleke is once again engaged to be married, this time to Lady Eva Blyton, daughter of an Earl. Feeling utterly out of place in such exalted company, he cannot think of a way to break off the engagement honourably, until Teal, her father's butler, overhearing Bleke's despair, offers a suggestion.
Bleke pays £100 for the butler's niece Maud, a plebiean barmaid, to pose as a jilted former lover; he writes some compromising letters to the girl, and she appears at the house, creating a scene and satisfactorily, though painfully, bringing an end to Bleke's engagement.
Later, Bleke is in a happy reverie as he opens his post; one of the letters is from a solicitor, saying that Maud has several letters in her possession, as well as witnesses in the shape of Miss Blyton's family, proving that he had promised to marry her. To avoid the scandal of a breach-of-promise case, she will accept £10,000.