was through my aunt Dorothy that I became
aware of Julia Bulsted's kindness in offering to take charge of my
father for a term. Lady Sampleman undertook to be hostess to him for
one night, the eve of Janet's nuptials. He was quiet, unlikely to give
annoyance to persons not strongly predisposed to hear sentences finished
and exclamations fall into their right places.

Adieu to my darling! There have been women well won; here was an
adorable woman well lost. After twenty years of slighting her, did I
fancy she would turn to me and throw a man over in reward of my ultimate
recovery of my senses?--or fancy that one so tenacious as she had proved
would snap a tie depending on her pledged word? She liked Edbury; she
saw the best of him, and liked him. The improved young lord was her
handiwork. After the years of humiliation from me, she had found
herself courted by a young nobleman who clung to her for help, showed
improvement, and brought her many compliments from a wondering world.
She really felt that she was strength and true life to him. She resisted
Heriot: she resisted a more powerful advocate, and this was the princess
Ottilia. My aunt Dorothy told me that the princess had written. Janet
either did or affected to weigh the princess's reasonings; and she did
not evade the task of furnishing a full reply.

Her resolution was unchanged. Loss of colour, loss of light in her eyes,
were the sole signs of what it cost her to maintain it. Our task was
to transfer the idea of Janet to that of Julia in my father's whirling
brain, which at first rebelled violently, and cast it out like a stick
thrust between rapidly revolving wheels.

The night before I was to take him away, she gave me her hand with a
'good-bye, dear Harry.' My words were much the same. She had a ghastly
face, but could not have known it, for she smiled, and tried to keep the
shallow smile in play, as friends do. There was the end.

It came abruptly, and was schoolingly cold and short.

It had the effect on me of freezing my blood and setting what seemed to
be the nerves of my brain at work in a fury of calculation to reckon the
minutes remaining of her maiden days. I had expected nothing, but now we
had parted I thought that one last scene to break my heart on should
not have been denied to me. My aunt Dorothy was a mute; she wept when I
spoke of Janet, whatever it was I said.

The minutes ran on from circumstance to circumstance of the destiny
Janet ha