It was just before the Christmas holidays when I finally made up my mind that of all the women in the world the Doctor’s daughter was the one for me, and when I told her so she did not try to conceal that this was also her own opinion.  I had seen the most charming qualities in other women, and my somewhat rapid and enthusiastic study of them had so familiarized me with them that I was enabled readily to perceive their existence in others.  I found them all in the Doctor’s daughter.

Her father was very well pleased when he heard of our compact.  It was plain that he had been waiting to hear of it.  When he furthermore heard that I had decided to abandon all thought of the law, and to study medicine instead, his satisfaction was complete.  He arranged everything with affectionate prudence.  I should read with him, beginning immediately, even before I gave up my school.  I should attend the necessary medical courses, and we need be in no hurry to marry.  We were both young, and when I was ready to become his assistant it would be time enough for him to give me his daughter.

We were sitting together in the Doctor’s library and had been looking over some of the papers of the Walford Literary Society, of which we were both officers, when I said, looking at her signature:  “By-the-way, I wish you would tell me one thing.  What does the initial ‘E.’ stand for in your name?  I never knew any one to use it.”

“No,” she said; “I do not like it.  It was given to me by my mother’s sister, who was a romantic young lady.  It is Europa.  And I only hope,” she added, quickly, “that you may have fifty years of it.”

* * * * *

Three years of the fifty have now passed, and each one of the young women I met in Cathay has married.  The first one to go off was Edith Larramie.  She married the college friend of her brother who was at the house when I visited them.  When I met her in Walford shortly after I heard of her engagement, she took me aside in her old way and told me she wanted me always to look upon her as my friend, no matter how circumstances might change with her or me.

“You do not know how much of a friend I was to you,” she said, “and it is not at all necessary you should know.  But I will say that when I saw you getting into such a dreadful snarl in our part of the country, I determined, if there were no other way to save you, I would marry you myself!  But I did not do it, and you ought to be very glad of it, for you would have found that a little of me, now and then, would be a great deal more to your taste than to have me always.”

[Illustration:  Europa]

Mrs. Chester married the man who had courted her before she fell in love with her school-master.  It appeared that the fact of her having been the landlady of the Holly Sprig made no difference in his case.  He was too rich to have any prospects which might be interfered with.