"For this is an awkward thing, and Tiburce had played me an unworthy
trick. He never did know when to leave off joking; but such posthumous
frivolity is past endurance. For, see now, in what a pickle it has
landed me! I have outlived my friends, I may encounter difficulty in
regaining my fiefs, and certainly I have lost the fairest wife man ever
had. Oh, can it be, madame, that you are indeed my Adelaide!"

"Yes, every pound of me, poor boy, and that says much."

"And that you have been untrue to the eternal fidelity which you swore
to me here by this very stream? Oh, but I cannot believe it was thirty
years ago, for not a grass-blade or a pebble has been altered; and I
perfectly remember the lapping of water under those lichened rocks, and
that continuous file of ripples yonder, which are shaped like
arrow-heads."

Adelaide rubbed her nose.

"Did I promise eternal fidelity? I can hardly remember that far back.
But I remember I wept a great deal, and my parents assured me you were
either dead or a rascal, so that tears could not help either way. Then
Ralph de Nointel came along, good man, and made me a fair husband, as
husbands go--"

"As for that stream," then said Dame Melicent, "it is often I have
thought of that stream, sitting here with my grandchildren where I once
sat with gay young men whom nobody remembers now save me. Yes, it is
strange to think that instantly, and within the speaking of any simple
word, no drop of water retains the place it held before the word was
spoken; and yet the stream remains unchanged, and stays as it was when I
sat here with those young men who are gone. Yes, that is a strange
thought, and it is a sad thought, too, for those of us who are old."

"But, Mother, of course the stream remains unchanged," agreed Dame
Adelaide. "Streams always do except at high water. Everybody knows that,
and I see nothing remarkable about it. As for you, Florian, if you
stickle for love's being an immortal affair," she added, with a large
twinkle, "I would have you know I have been a widow for three years. So
the matter could be arranged."

Florian looked at her sadly. To him the situation was incongruous with
the terrible archness of a fat woman.

"But, madame, you are no longer the same person."

She patted him upon the shoulder.

"Come, Florian, there is some sense in you, after all. Console yourself,
lad, with the reflection that if you had stuck manfully by your wife
instead of mooning ab