“Yes, Lucille, and I think I shall marry art only.”

“Don’t be rash, Leo, we frail human beings know little in advance as to heaven’s plans.”

Few forces work truer in nature than the principle that like begets like.  Leo confided in Lucille, and now Lucille confided in Leo; she slowly told in low voice the story of her own great disappointment.

“I too, once had an ideal lover.  Our souls were one; the day of wedding even had been fixed; orders for an expensive trousseau had been sent to Paris; the details of the marriage had been arranged, a long journey abroad planned, and the city for our future home was selected.  These things had become part of my dreams, and the joy of anticipation was filling my cup to the brim.

“One evening, in the moonlight, such as now smiles upon us, I asked Bernard if he would read a short note which I had just received, and tell me if its contents were true.  Bernard removed the letter from the envelope, looked at the signature, and reading turned pale.  The note was from a lady who asked if I was aware that he had offered himself to another.

“A second time I pressed the question to know if the contents were true, and he answered, ‘Yes’, and added that it was not his fault that he did not marry the lady.

“‘Then you love her still, Bernard?’

“‘Yes, Lucille, but I love you also.’

“In anger and disappointed love I left him.  Of course all plans for the marriage were cancelled at once.  ‘First love or none,’ was then written on my heart, where it still remains.”

Lucille wept while Leo sat surprised.  He knew not what to say, for her heart-story and heart edict, “First love or none,” had opened his own wounds afresh, and had shut the door to Lucille’s heart perhaps forever.

“Come, Lucille,” a call of Mrs. Harris, aroused the courage of Leo, and he said to Lucille, who with a flushed face looked more beautiful than ever, “At least we should be friends.”  “Yes,” she murmured, and Mrs. Harris and her daughter retired.

The night before, the second officer had told Lucille that land would probably be seen early next day on the port-side.  All the morning, Mrs. Harris was awaiting anxiously more news about the great strike at Harrisville.

“Land, on the port-side, sir!” shouted the forward lookout, just as four bells struck the hour of ten o’clock.  The officer on duty, pacing the bridge, raised his glass and in a moment he answered, “Ay!  Ay!  The Skelligs.”

“What do they mean?” inquired Mrs. Harris of a sailor passing.  “The officer has sighted land, madam.  Don’t you see the specks of blue low down on the horizon to the northeast?  That’s the Skelligs, three rocky islets off the southwest coast of Ireland, near where I was born, and where my wife Katy, and the babies live.  That’s where my dear old mother also keeps watch for her Patsie.”

“Is your name Patsie?” Alfonso asked.