y sign? I almost prayed
not, and yet I feared and longed to hear from him.

This is not a school-girl love story I am writing, but the chronicle
of my life. I have always despised sentimental heart-burnings, and
when I used to read of the heroine dying for love, it always made me
laugh. But, oh, never again can I know such bitterness in life as I
have suffered in this black week--to have been so near to bliss, and
now to be away forever!

What good to me were my freedom and riches? As well be married or
dead. I never knew before how much I had been looking forward to
seeing Antony again. I never realized how, instinctively, for months
my soul had been living in the background on this thought.

And now it was all finished. I must not be a coward. Oh, how I wished
again for grandmamma's spirit! This time I must tear the whole thing
out of my life at once.

To go on caring for another woman's lover was beneath contempt.

When I should have recovered a little, I would go back to England and
mix with the world, and gradually forget, and eventually marry the
Duke. Fortunately, as the Marquis said, _a vingt ans_ one could never
be sure of love lasting. So probably I should soon be cured, and there
would be compensation in being an English duchess. It was a great
position, as Miss Corrisande K. Trumpet had said. And all men make
good enough husbands if you have control of the dollars, I remember
she added.

Well, I should have control of the dollars. So we should see.

The Duke was a gentleman, too, and intelligent, agreeable, and had
liberal views. His Duchess might eventually have a "friend," like the
rest, he had said. So, no doubt, I should be able to acquire the habit
of thus amusing myself. Why should I hesitate, when the best and the
noblest gave me examples?

All my ideas on those subjects had fallen to pieces like a pack of
cards.

"'Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow you die.'"

Well, I had never eaten or drunk of happiness yet, and now my heart
was dead. So what was the good of it all, anyway? _A quoi bon_? and
again, _a quoi bon_? That is what the trees said to me when they tired
of calling for Antony.

I breakfasted and lunched and dined and walked miles every day. I
loathed my food. I hated the faces of the people who stared at me.
I fear I even snapped at McGreggor. Roy was my only comfort.

But gradually the beauty and peace of the pine-forests soothed me.
Better thoughts came. I said to mys