[Footnote 3:  See Frontispiece.]

[Illustration:  “ON THEIR HONEYMOON.”]

But it was not to be.  A big wave intervened to separate us, and swept away all traces of the road before us.  Poor Carry!  Yes, she had a story.  Sad.  Bright.  Then sad again.  First she gave to Amor what was Amor’s, and then to Hymen what was Hymen’s.  She tasted of the apple her friend the serpent had told her so much about.  Then—­“la femme a une chute est rare comme le Niagara”—­and there are more apples than one in the Garden of Eden—­she tried another; such a bad one unfortunately.  It was a wonder it didn’t poison her, body and soul, but it didn’t.  There was a moment when the Angel with the flaming sword threatened to cast her adrift, and it would have fared badly with her had not a helping hand come to save her.  But sound as she was at the core, and true, she rallied and rose again to new life and unhoped-for happiness.  It was a young doctor who came to the rescue; a mere boy he seemed to look at; but a man he was in deed and word.  He worked hard and walked fast; he defied convention and challenged fate.  With a stout heart he laboured to raise Carry to the level of his affections, and with a strong hand he tightened his hold upon her.  He loved her passionately, devotedly, and she, clinging to him as to the instrument of her salvation, gradually regained her better self, and, slowly but surely, learnt to find in her own heart the greatest of treasures that woman can bestow upon man.  But he was a Southerner of the French meridional type, excitable and impulsive, and, so, alas! he was jealous of Carry’s northern friends and snapped the thread asunder that bound her to them.  We only knew, and that we learnt in a roundabout way, that she was the happiest little wife in Paris.  Once, and only once, she wrote to us, to tell us how complete was her happiness.  A crowning glory had come; a little glory to nurse and fondle, to cry over—­tears of joy; to smile to—­the prettiest, foolishest of mother’s smiles; to pray for and to worship from the bottom of her little blossoming soul.  It was not till three years later that I was in Paris and succeeded in picking up the thread of Carry’s story.  Hale and hearty, overflowing with health and happiness, the young doctor had gone to his work at the hospital.  He came home blood-poisoned, to die in his wife’s arms.  It was a case of self-sacrifice in the cause of science, of heroic devotion to a fellow-creature.  And the young widow was left alone again, with none to weep over (tears of anguish this time) but the little glory, who, poor thing, could only wonder, but not soothe.  What can have become of Carry once more cast adrift in Paris to fight the battle of life in this hard ever love-making world?

We never knew.

Back to England.  The time had come when—­

“Who was to be lucky and who to be rich, Who’d get to the top of the tree; Was a mystery which Dame Fortune, the witch, Was to tell du Maurier and me.”

[Illustration]