lling amid the splashing of the waves:

"God be with you, my friends. Adieu, mam'zelle!"

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-NINTH.

A POSTSCRIPT BY MARTIN DOBREE.

You may describe to a second person, with the most minute and exact
fidelity in your power, the leading and critical events in your life,
and you will find that some trifle of his own experience is ten times
more vivid to his mind. You narrate to your friend, whom you have not
met for many years, the incident that has turned the whole current of
your existence; and after a minute or two of musing, he asks you, "Do
you remember the day we two went bird-nesting on Gull's Cliff?" That day
of boyish daring and of narrow escapes is more real to him than your
deepest troubles or keenest joys. The brain receives but slightly
second-hand impressions.

I had told Olivia faithfully all my dilemmas with regard to Julia and
the Careys; and she had seemed to listen with intense interest.
Certainly it was during those four bewildering and enchanted months
immediately preceding our marriage, and no doubt the narrative was
interwoven with many a topic of quite a different character. However
that might be, I was surprised to find that Olivia was not half as
nervous and anxious as I felt, when we were nearing Guernsey on our
visit to Julia and Captain Carey. Julia had seen her but once, and that
for a few minutes only in Sark. On her account she had suffered the
severest mortification a woman can undergo. How would she receive my
wife?

Olivia did not know, though I did, that Julia was somewhat frigid and
distant in her manner, even while thoroughly hospitable in her welcome.
Olivia felt the hospitality; I felt the frigidity. Julia called her
"Mrs. Dobree." It was the first time she had been addressed by that
name; and her blush and smile were exquisite to me, but they did not
thaw Julia in the least. I began to fear that there would be between
them that strange, uncomfortable, east-wind coolness, which so often
exists between the two women a man most loves.

It was the baby that did it. Nothing on earth could be more charming, or
more winning, than Olivia's delight over that child. It was the first
baby she had ever had in her arms, she told us; and to see her sitting
in the low rocking-chair, with her head bent over it, and to watch her
dainty way of handling it, was quite a picture. Captain Carey had an
artist's eye, and was in raptures; Julia had a mother's eye, and was s