hough cases occasionally come under
one's observation where the results have proved to be in every way
satisfactory; and I must say that, if I may form an opinion from the
facts as they are before me, I never knew an engagement entered into
under more promising or more romantic auspices. Here the young gentleman
quarrels with his uncle in taking the part of the young lady, and thereby
is disinherited of vast wealth. Then the young lady, under the most
terrible circumstances, takes steps of a nature that not one woman in
five hundred would have done to restore to him that wealth. Whether or no
those steps will ultimately prove successful I do not know, and, if I
did, like Herodotus, I should prefer not to say; but whether the wealth
comes or goes, it is impossible but that a sense of mutual confidence and
a mutual respect and admiration--that is, if a more quiet thing,
certainly, also, a more enduring thing, than mere 'love'--must and will
result from them. Mr. Meeson, you are indeed a fortunate man. In Miss
Smithers you are going to marry beauty, courage, and genius, and if you
will allow an older man of some experience to drop the official and give
you a word of advice, it is this: always try to deserve your good
fortune, and remember that a man who, in his youth, finds such a woman,
and is enabled by circumstances to marry her, is indeed--

_Smiled on by Joy, and cherished of the Gods._

"And now I will end my sermon, and wish you both health and happiness and
fulness of days," and he drank off his glass of champagne, and looked so
pleasant and kindly that Augusta longed to kiss him on the spot, and as
for Eustace, he shook hands with him warmly, and then and there a
friendship began between the two which endures till now.

And then they all went back to the office, and there was the photographer
waiting with all his apparatus, and astonished enough he was when he
found out what the job was that he had to do. However, the task proved an
easy one enough, as the light of the room was suitable, and the dark
lines of cuttle ink upon Augusta's neck would, the man said, come out
perfectly in the photograph. So he took two or three shots at her back
and then departed, saying that he would bring a life-sized reproduction
to be filed in the Registry in a couple of days.

And after that the learned Registrar also shook hands with them, and said
that he need detain them no longer, as he now felt justified in allowing
Augusta