“It is about Olivia,” I said, in as cool a tone as I could command.

“Yes,” answered Julia; “we have seen her, and we have found out why she has refused you.  She is married already.”

“She told me so yesterday,” I replied.

“Told you so yesterday!” repeated Julia, in an accent of chagrin.  “If we had only known that, we might have saved ourselves the passage across to Sark.”

“My dear Julia,” exclaimed my mother, feverishly, “do tell us all about it, and begin at the beginning.”

There was nothing Julia liked so much, or could do so well, as to give a circumstantial account of any thing she had done.  She could relate minute details with so much accuracy, without being exactly tedious, that when one was lazy or unoccupied it was pleasant to listen.  My mother enjoyed, with all the delight of a woman, the small touches by which Julia embellished her sketches.  I resigned myself to hearing a long history, when I was burning to ask one or two questions and have done with the topic.

“To begin at the beginning, then,” said Julia, “dear Captain Carey came into town very late last night to talk to us about Martin, and how the girl in Sark had refused him.  I was very much astonished, very much indeed!  Captain Carey said that he and dear Johanna had come to the conclusion that the girl felt some delicacy, perhaps, because of Martin’s engagement to me.  We talked it over as friends, and thought of you, dear aunt, and your grief and disappointment, till all at once I made up my mind in a moment.  ’I will go over to Sark and see the girl myself,’ I said.  ‘Will you?’ said Captain Carey.  ’Oh, no, Julia, it will be too much for you.’  ‘It would have been a few weeks ago,’ I said; ’but now I could do any thing to give Aunt Dobree a moment’s happiness.’”

“God bless you, Julia!” I interrupted, going across to her and kissing her cheek impetuously.

“There, don’t stop me, Martin,” she said, earnestly.  “So it was arranged off-hand that Captain Carey should send for us at St. Sampson’s this morning, and take us over to Sark.  You know Kate has never been yet.  We had a splendid passage, and landed at the Creux, where the yacht was to wait till we returned.  Kate was in raptures with the landing-place, and the lovely lane leading up into the island.  We went on past Vaudin’s Inn and the mill, and turned down the nearest way to Tardifs.  Kate said she never felt any air like the air of Sark.  Well, you know that brown pool, a very brown pool, in the lane leading to the Havre Gosselin?  Just there, where there are some low, weather-beaten trees meeting overhead and making a long green isle, with the sun shining down through the knotted branches, we saw all in a moment a slim, erect, very young-looking girl coming toward us.  She was carrying her bonnet in her hand, and her hair curled in short, bright curls all over her head.  I knew in an instant that it was Miss Ollivier.”