Martia. I may be able to make it all up to you some
day; after all, you can't foresee and command the future, nor can I.
It wouldn't be worth living for if we could! It would all be
discounted in advance!

"I may yet succeed in leading a useful, happy life; and that should
be enough for you if it's enough for me, since I am your beloved,
and as you love me as your son.... Anyhow, my mind is made up for
good and all, and...."

Here the sensation of the north suddenly left him, and he went to
his bed with the sense of bereavement that had punished him all the
preceding week: desperately sad, all but heart-broken, and feeling
almost like a culprit, although his conscience, whatever that was
worth, was thoroughly at ease, and his intent inflexible.

A day or two after this he must have received a note from Julia,
making an appointment to meet him at the Ausstellung, in the Allee
Strasse, a pretty little picture-gallery, since he was seen there
sitting in deep conversation with Miss Royce in a corner, and both
seeming much moved; neither the Admiral nor Lady Jane was with them,
and there was some gossip about it in the British colony both in
Duesseldorf and Riffrath.

Barty, who of late years has talked to me so much, and with such
affectionate admiration, of "Julia Countess," as he called her,
never happened to have mentioned this interview; he was very
reticent about his love-makings, especially about any love that was
made to him.

I made so bold as to write to Julia, Lady Ironsides, and ask her if
it were true they had met like this, and if I might print her
answer, and received almost by return of post the following kind and
characteristic letter:

"96 Grosvenor Square.

"Dear Sir Robert,--You're quite right; I did meet him, and I've no
objection whatever to telling you how it all happened--and you may
do as you like.

"It happened just like this (you must remember that I was only just
out, and had always had my own way in everything).

"Mamma and I and Uncle James (the Admiral) and Freddy Reece
(Ironsides, you know) went to the Musikfest in Duesseldorf. Barty was
singing in the chorus. I saw him opening and shutting his mouth and
could almost fancy I heard him, poor dear boy.

"Leah Gibson, as she was then, sat near to me, with her mother and
your sister. Leah Gibson looked like--well, _you_ know what she
looke