ness. The marriage was soon arranged;
the alliance proved successful if not always serene; one
child--Sara-Louise-Tatiana-Valerie--was born, an event which was
followed, nine days later, by the death of the Countess.

Lord Garrow, a man of refined ideas rather than profound feelings,
displayed in mourning his wife's loss the same gentle, dispassionate,
and courteous persistency with which he had remained constant to his
first impression of her charms. She had been a beautiful, high-hearted
girl; she became a fascinating but wayward woman; she died a creature
of such mingled ferocity and sentiment that, had she not perished when
she did, she must have existed in misery under the storms of her own
temperament. As Garrow watched his daughter's face, he may have been
touched to a deeper chord than usual at the sight of her strange and
growing resemblance to his dead Tatiana. Did she too possess--as her
mother had possessed--the sweet but calamitous gift of loving? He
himself had not been the object of his wife's supreme devotion. Before
the child's birth she had given him an emerald ring which, she declared,
was all that she valued on earth. It was no gift of his; it had belonged
to a young attache to her father's embassy. Affection had taught Lord
Garrow something; he asked no questions; the jewel was placed, by his
orders, on her dead hand; it was buried with her, and with that burial
he included any jealousy of her early romance. He had been sincerely,
wholly attached to her; he had been proud of her graces and
accomplishments; he knew her virtue and honoured her pure mind; she was
the one woman he had ever wished to marry. He did not regret, nay, it
was impossible to regret, their marriage. But she had been ever an alien
and a stranger. Each had too often considered the other's heart with
surprise. True love must rest on a perfect understanding; at the first
lifting of the eyes in wonder there is a jar which by and by must make
the whole emotion restless. An unconquerable curiosity lay at the very
root of their lives. She thought him English and self-sufficient; he
thought her foreign and a little superstitious. This ineffable criticism
was constant, fretful, and ever nearing the climax of uttered reproach.
Sara had inherited all the amazement, but she owned, as well, its
comprehension. She adored passionately the mother she had never seen;
she loved her father, whom she knew by heart. After exchanging an
affectionate g