Most of her time was spent in gazing from her window, that overlooked the bay, and dreaming of the return of one who had long since heartlessly deserted her, leaving her dependent on those she had injured, and from whom she bitterly and even derisively received shelter, tender ministry, and all possible manifestations of compassion and interest.

Her mind had been partially overthrown at the time of her husband’s desertion and her dead baby’s birth—­events that occurred almost conjointly; and it was the wreck of Evelyn Erie we cherished until her slow consumption, long delayed by the balmy air of California, culminated mercifully to herself and all around her, and removed her from this sphere of suffering.

Whither?  Alas! the impotence of that question!  Are there not beings who seem, indeed, to lack the great essential for salvation—­a soul to be saved?  How far are such responsible?

Claude Bainrothe is married again, and not to Ada Greene, who, outcast and poor, came some years since as an adventuress to California, and signalized herself later, in the demi-monde, as a leader of great audacity, beauty, and reckless extravagance.  The lady of his choice (or heart?) was a fat baroness, about twenty years his senior, who lets apartments, and maintains the externes of her rank in a saloon fifteen feet square, furnished with red velveteen, and accessible by means of an antechamber paved with tiles!

He has grown stout, drinks beer, and smokes a meerschaum, but is still known on the principal promenade, and in the casino of the German town in which he resides, as “the handsome American.”  He is said, however, to have spells of melancholy.

The “Chevalier Bainrothan,” and the “Lady Charlotte Fremont,” his step-daughter, for as such she passes, for some quaint or wicked reason unrevealed to society, with their respectable and hideous house-keeper, Madame Clayton, dwell under the same roof, and enjoy the privilege of access to the salon of the baroness, and a weekly game of ecarte at her soirees, usually profitable to the chevalier in a small way.

All this did Major Favraud, in his own merry mood, communicate to us on the occasion of his memorable visit to San Francisco, when he remained our delighted guest during one long delicious summer season.  Of Gregory, we never heard.

“I had hoped to hear of your marriage long before this,” I said to him one day.  “Tell me why you have not wedded some fair lady before this time.  Now tell me frankly as you can.”

“Simply because you did not wait for me.”

“Nonsense! the truth.  I want no badinage”

“Because, then—­because I never could forget Celia—­never love any one else.”

“She was one of Swedenborg’s angels.  Major Favraud—­no real wife of yours.  She never was married”—­and I shook my head—­“only united to a being of the earth with whom she had no real affinity.  Choose yours elsewhere.”