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.”

“I believe you are half right,” he said, sadly.  “She never seemed to belong to me by right—­only a bird I had caught and caged, that loved me well, yet was eager to escape.”

“Such was the state of the case, I cannot doubt; a more out and out flesh-and-blood organization would suit you better.  Your life is not half spent; the dreary time is to come.  Go back to Bellevue, and get you a kind companion, and let children climb your knees, and surround your hearth.  You would be so much happier.”

“Suggest one, then.  Come, help me to a wife.”

“No, no, I can make no matches; but you know Madame de St. Aube is a widow now.  You were always congenial.”

“Yes, but”—­with a shrug of his shoulders, worthy of a Frenchman—­“que voulez vous? That woman has five children already, and a plantation mortgaged to Maginnis!”

“Maginnis again!  The very name sends a chill through my bones!  No, that will never do.  Some maiden lady, then—­some sage person of thirty-four or five.”

“I do not fancy such.  I’ll tell you what!  I believe I will go back and court Bertie on some of her play-acting rounds, and make a decent woman of that little vagabond.  Because she was disappointed once, is that a reason?  Great Heavens! this tongue of mine!  Cut it out, Mrs. Wentworth, and cast it to the seals in the bay.  I came very near—­”

“Betraying what I have long suspected, Major Favraud.  Who was that man?”

“Don’t ask me, my dear woman; I must not say another word, in honor.  It was a most unfortunate affair—­a sheer misunderstanding.  He loved her all the time; I knew this, but you know her manner!  He did not understand her flippant way; her keen, unsparing, and bitter wit; her devoted, passionate, proud, and breaking heart; and so there was a coolness, and they parted; and what happened afterward nearly killed her!  So she left her home."[6]

“I must not ask you, I feel, for you say you cannot tell me more in honor, but I think I know.  The man, of all the earth, I would have chosen for her.  Oh, hard is woman’s fate!”