t, and took me
out for a little sail under the beautiful cliffs, where we
could look up and see all those strange carvings upon the
rocks. I thought that perhaps there were real things written
there that we should like to read. Sometimes in the sky there
are fine faint lines across the blue which look like written
sentences, if one could only make them out. Here they are on
the rocks, but every tide washes them away, leaving fresh
ones. Perhaps they are messages to me, answers to those
questions that I cannot answer myself.

"Good-by, my good doctor. I am trying to do every thing you
told me exactly; and I am getting well again fast. I do not
believe I shall be lame; you are too clever for that. Your
patient,

"OLIVIA."

Olivia! I looked at the word again to make sure of it. Then it was not
her surname that was Ollivier, and I was still ignorant of that. I saw
in a moment how the mistake had arisen, and how innocent she was of any
deception in the matter. She would tell Tardif that her name was Olivia,
and he thought only of the Olliviers he knew. It was a mistake that had
been of use in checking curiosity, and I did not feel bound to put it
right. My mother and Julia appeared to have forgotten my patient in Sark
altogether.

Olivia! I thought it a very pretty name, and repeated it to myself with
its abbreviations, Olive, Livy. It was difficult to abbreviate Julia; Ju
I had called her in my rudest school-boy days. I wondered how high
Olivia would stand beside me; for I had never seen her on her feet.
Julia was not two inches shorter than myself; a tall, stiff figure,
neither slender enough to be lissome, nor well-proportioned enough to be
majestic. But she was very good, and her price was far above rubies.

According to the wise man, it was a difficult task to find a virtuous
woman.

It was a quiet time in the afternoon, and in order to verify my
recollection of the wise man's saying, which was a little cloudy in my
memory, I searched through Julia's Bible for it. I came across a passage
which made me pause and consider. "Behold, this have I found, saith the
preacher, counting one by one, to find out the account: which yet my
soul seeketh, but I find not; one man among a thousand have I found; but
a woman among all those have I not found."

"Tardif is the man," I said to myself, "but is Julia the woman? Have I
had better luck than Solomon?"