and the flesh of her chin quivered as
she told me that was _quite impossible--and could never be_.

I asked her if there was anybody else, and she said there was
nobody, but that she did not wish ever to marry; that, beyond her
parents and Ida, she loved and respected me more than anybody else
in the whole world, but that she could never marry me. She was much
agitated, and said the sweetest, kindest things, but put all hope
out of the question at once.

It was the greatest blow I have ever had in my life.

Three days after, I went to America; and before I came back I had
started in New York the American branch of the house of
Vougeot-Conti, and laid the real foundation of the largest fortune
that has ever yet been made by selling wine, and of the long
political career about which I will say nothing in these pages.

On my voyage out I wrote a long blaze letter to Barty, and poured
out all my grief, and my resignation to the decree which I felt to
be irrevocable. I reminded him of that playful toss-up in
Southampton Row, and told him that, having surrendered all claims
myself, the best thing that could happen to me was that she should
some day marry _him_ (which I certainly did not think at all
likely).

So henceforward, reader, you will not be troubled by your obedient
servant with the loves of a prosperous merchant of wines. Had those
loves been more successful, and the wines less so, you would never
have heard of either.

Whether or not I should have been a happier man in the long-run I
really can't say--mine has been, on the whole, a very happy life, as
men's lives go; but I am bound to admit, in all due modesty, that
the universe would probably have been the poorer by some very
splendid people, and perhaps by some very splendid things it could
ill have spared; and one great and beautifully borne sorrow the less
would have been ushered into this world of many sorrows.

* * * * *

It was a bright May morning (a year after this) when Barty and his
aunt Caroline and his cousin Daphne and their servants left Antwerp
for Duesseldorf on the Rhine.

At Malines they had to change trains, and spent half an hour at the
station waiting for the express from Brussels and bidding farewell
to their Mechlin friends, who had come there to wish them God-speed:
the Abbe Lefebvre, Father Louis, and others; and the Torfses, pere
et mere; and little Frau, who wept freely as Lady Caroline kissed