love to a more impassable distance. He heaved a sigh
to her memory, and buried it underground.

Within a week from that day he was engaged to the confidante. It seemed
the obvious thing to do, for he knew her more intimately than any other
girl of his acquaintance, and owed her a debt of gratitude for her
sympathy in his former affair. She was quite a nice girl, too; not
pretty, but amiable and healthy, with a small income of her own which
would come in usefully towards running the house. He wished her
eyelashes had not been quite so white; but one could not have
everything. She was a nice, affectionate girl.

The confidante accepted Francis because she was tired of living at home
with a managing mamma, and wanted to start life on her own account. She
liked Francis, was proud of his fine appearance, knew him to be
good-tempered and honourable, and was complacently assured that they
would "get on." Far better, she said, to begin with a sensible,
open-eyed liking, than a headlong passion which would wear itself out
before the honeymoon was over. It was, in short, a sensible marriage
between eminently sensible contracting parties. The little God of Love
had no part in the ceremony, but it is only fair to mention that nobody
missed him.

Mr and Mrs Manning went to Scotland for their honeymoon, and Francis
played golf every day, what time his wife read novels in the veranda of
the hotel. She sped him on his way with a smile, and welcomed him back
with a smile to match, and if the young girls in the hotel confided in
each other that _they_ would break their hearts if _their_ bridegrooms
neglected them in such a fashion, such a thought never entered her head.
She would have been bored if Francis had stayed beside her all day
long. What on earth could they have found to say?

At the end of a fortnight Mr and Mrs Manning returned to a
semi-detached villa in a southern suburb, and settled down to a
comfortable married life.

Mr and Mrs Francis Manning spent the next ten years in peace and
comfort, and humdrum happiness. They had good health, easy means, a
large number of acquaintances, and three little daughters. The
daughters were plain, but sturdy, and gave a minimum of trouble in the
household. Francis, indeed, insisted on this point. Early in the
lifetime of Maud, the eldest daughter, he had become aware of the
amazing fact that nurses occasionally wished to "go out"; that, in
addition, they wished to go