ulties was a task
that beat the Augean stables hollow. The three months of his probation
he worked hard; he sold off all his pictures, his stud, and his
_meubles_; he sold, what cost him a more bitter pang, his encumbered
estates in Surrey; he paid off all his debts, Bluette's twenty thousand
francs included; and shaking himself free of the accumulated
embarrassments of fifteen years, he crossed the water to claim his last
love. No poor little Huguenot was ever persecuted for her faith more
than poor little Nina for her engagement. Every relative she had thought
it his duty to write admonitory letters, plentifully interspersed with
texts. Eusebius and his 4000_l._ a year, and his perspective bishopric,
were held up before her from morning to night; the banker, whose
deception in the Melusine had turned him into sharper vinegar than
before, told her with chill stoicism that she must of course choose her
own path in life, but that if that path led her into the Chaussee
d'Antin, she need never expect a sou from him, for all his property
would be divided between her two brothers. But Nina was neither to be
frightened nor bribed. She kept true to her lover, and disinherited
herself.

They were married a week or two after Nina's majority; and Gordon knew
it, though he could not prevent it. They did not miss the absence of
bridesmaids, bishop, dejeuner, and the usual fashionable crowd. It was a
marriage of the heart, you see, and did not want the trappings with
which they gild that bitter pill so often swallowed now-a-days--a
"mariage de convenance." Nina, as she saw further still into the wealth
of deep feeling and strong affection which, at her touch, she had awoke
in his heart, felt that money, and friends, and the world's smile were
well lost since she had won him. And Ernest--Ernest's sacrifice was
greater; for it is not a little thing, young ladies, for a man to give
up his accustomed freedom, and luxuries, and careless vie de garcon, and
to have to think and work for another, even though dearer than himself.
But he had long since seen so much of life, had exhausted all its
pleasures so rapidly, that they palled upon him, and for some time he
had vaguely wanted something of deeper interest, of warmer sympathy.
Unknown to himself, he had felt the "besoin d'etre aime"--a want the
trash offered him by the women of his acquaintance could never
satisfy--and his warm, passionate nature found rest in a love which,
though the s