memorializing about it. You may as well do it as anybody else, Maurice."

"Ay. And save the expenses of the trip," said Maurice.

"But it is so melancholy," cried Sylvia.

"The most delightful place in the island, my dear. I was there for a few
days once, and I really was charmed."

It was remarkable--so Vickers thought--how each of these newly-mated
ones had caught something of the other's manner of speech. Sylvia was
less choice in her mode of utterance; Frere more so. He caught himself
wondering which of the two methods both would finally adopt.

"But those dogs, and sharks, and things. Oh, Maurice, haven't we had
enough of convicts?"

"Enough! Why, I'm going to make my living out of 'em," said Maurice,
with his most natural manner.

Sylvia sighed.

"Play something, darling," said her father; and so the girl, sitting
down to the piano, trilled and warbled in her pure young voice, until
the Port Arthur question floated itself away upon waves of melody,
and was heard of no more for that time. But upon pursuing the subject,
Sylvia found her husband firm. He wanted to go, and he would go. Having
once assured himself that it was advantageous to him to do a certain
thing, the native obstinacy of the animal urged him to do it despite all
opposition from others, and Sylvia, having had her first "cry" over the
question of the visit, gave up the point. This was the first difference
of their short married life, and she hastened to condone it. In the
sunshine of Love and Marriage--for Maurice at first really loved her;
and love, curbing the worst part of him, brought to him, as it brings
to all of us, that gentleness and abnegation of self which is the only
token and assurance of a love aught but animal--Sylvia's fears and
doubts melted away, as the mists melt in the beams of morning. A young
girl, with passionate fancy, with honest and noble aspiration, but with
the dark shadow of her early mental sickness brooding upon her childlike
nature, Marriage made her a woman, by developing in her a woman's trust
and pride in the man to whom she had voluntarily given herself. Yet
by-and-by out of this sentiment arose a new and strange source of
anxiety. Having accepted her position as a wife, and put away from her
all doubts as to her own capacity for loving the man to whom she had
allied herself, she began to be haunted by a dread lest he might do
something which would lessen the affection she bore him. On one or two
occasion