ke that. They come like the stars of
night and go like the light of heaven. Same as there are some women who
walk the world like the sun, and leave the grass growing green wherever
their feet have trod."

It was very ridiculous, I did not then understand why it should be so,
but the tears came gushing into my eyes while the doctor spoke, and it
was as much as I could do to preserve my composure.

What interpretation my husband put upon my emotion I do not know, but I
saw that his face darkened, and when the doctor turned to him to ask if
he also knew Martin he answered curtly and brusquely,

"Not I. No loss either, I should say."

"No loss?" said the doctor. "Show me the man under the stars of God
that's fit to hold a candle to Martin Conrad, and by the angel Gabriel
I'll go fifty miles out of my way to put a sight on him."

More than ever after this talk about Martin Conrad I was feeling
defenceless, and at the mercy of my husband's wishes and whims, when
something happened which seemed to change his character altogether.

The third day out, on a bright and quiet morning, we called at Malta,
and while my husband went ashore to visit some friends in the garrison,
I sat on deck watching the life of the little port and looking at the
big warships anchored in the bay.

A Maltese woman came on board to sell souvenirs of the island, and
picking out of her tray a tiny twisted thing in coral, I asked what it
was.

"That's a charm, my lady," said the woman.

"A charm for what?"

"To make my lady's husband love her."

I felt my face becoming crimson, but my heart was sore, so in my
simplicity I bought the charm and was smuggling it into my bag when I
became aware that one of my fellow-passengers, a lady, was looking down
at me.

She was a tall, singularly handsome woman, fashionably and (although on
shipboard) almost sumptuously dressed. A look in her face was haunting
me with a memory I could not fix when she stooped and said:

"Aren't you Mary O'Neill?"

The voice completed the identification, and I knew who it was. It was
Alma Lier.

She was now about seven-and-twenty and in the prime of her young
womanhood. Her beautiful auburn hair lay low over her broad forehead,
almost descending to her long sable-coloured eyebrows. Her cheeks were
very white, (rather beyond the whiteness of nature, I thought), and her
lips were more than commonly red, with the upper one a little thin and
the lower slightly set forward