Nowell was eminently worthy of your affection; but you know the old
song--'If she be not fair to me, what care I how fair she be.' There are
plenty of women in the world. The choice is wide enough."

"Not for me, John. Marian Nowell is the only woman I have ever loved, the
only woman I ever can love."

"My dear boy, it is so natural for you to believe that just now; and a
year hence you will think so differently!"

"No, John. But I am not going to mate any protestations of my constancy.
Let the matter rest. I knew that my life is broken--that this blow has
left me nothing to hope for or to live for, except the hope of finding
the girl who has wronged me. I won't weary you with lamentations. My talk
has been entirely of self since I came into this room. Tell me your own
affairs, Jack, old friend. How has the world gone with you since we
parted at Liverpool last year?"

"Not too smoothly. My financial position becomes a little more obscure
and difficult of comprehension every year, as you know; but I rub on
somehow. I have been working at literature like a galley-slave; have
contributed no end of stuff to the Quarterlies; and am engaged upon a
book,--yes Gil, positively a book,--which I hope may do great things for
me if ever I can finish it."

"Is it a novel?"

"A novel! no!" cried John Saltram, with a wry face; "it is the romance
of reality I deal with. My book is a Life of Jonathan Swift. He was
always a favourite study of mine, you know, that brilliant, unprincipled,
intolerant, cynical, irresistible, miserable man. Scott's biography seems
to me to give but a tame picture, and others are only sketches. Mine will
be a pre-Raphaelite study--faithful as a photograph, careful as a
miniature on ivory, and life-size."

"I trust it will bring you fame and money when the time comes," answered
Gilbert. "And how about Mrs. Branston? Is she as charming as ever?"

"A little more so, if possible. Poor old Michael Branston is dead--went
off the hooks rather suddenly about a month ago. The widow looks amazingly
pretty in her weeds."

"And you will marry her, I suppose, Jack, as soon as her mourning is
over?"

"Well, yes; it is on the cards," John Saltram said, in an indifferent
tone.

"Why, how you say that! Is there any doubt as to the lady's fortune?"

"O no; that is all square enough. Michael Branston's will was in the
_Illustrated London News_; the personalty sworn under a hundred and
twenty thousand,--all left to