I did not deign to reply to him, and Jack leaned forward a little to look into my face.

"Olivia," he continued, "that is part of what Martin says. We have just been speaking of you as we came down to Fulham--never before. He maintains he is bound in honor to leave you as free as possible to make your choice, not merely between us, but from the number of fellows who have found their way down here, since you came. You made one fatal mistake, he says, through your complete ignorance of the world; and it is his duty to take care that you do not make a second mistake, through any gratitude you might feel toward him. He would not be satisfied with gratitude. Besides, he has discovered that he is not so great a prize as he fancied, as long as he lived in Guernsey; and you are a richer prize than you seemed to be then. With your fortune you ought to make a much better match than with a young physician, who has to push his way among a host of competitors. Lastly, Martin said, for I'm merely repeating his own arguments to you: 'Do you think I can put her happiness and mine into a balance, and coolly calculate which has the greater weight? If I had to choose for her, I should not hesitate between you and me.' Now I have told you the sum of our conversation, Olivia."

Every word Dr. John had spoken had thrown clearer light upon Martin's conduct. He had been afraid I should feel myself bound to him; and the very fact that he had once told me he loved me, had made it more difficult to him to say so a second time. He would not have any love from me as a duty. If I did not love him fully, with my whole heart, choosing him after knowing others with whom I could compare him, he would not receive any lesser gift from me.

"What will you do, my dear Olivia?" asked Dr. John.

"What can I do?" I said.

"Go to him," he urged; "he is alone. I saw him a moment ago, looking out at us from the drawing-room window. The old fellow is making up his mind to see you and me happy together, and to conceal his own sorrow. God bless him! Olivia, my dear girl, go to him."

"O Jack!" I cried, "I cannot."

"I don't see why you cannot," he answered, gayly. "You are trembling, and your face goes from white to red, and then white again; but you have not lost the use of your limbs, or your tongue. If you take my arm, it will not be very difficult to cross the lawn. Come; he is the best fellow living, and worth walking a dozen yards for."

Jack drew my hand through his arm, and led me across the smooth lawn. We caught a glimpse of Martin looking out at us; but he turned away in an instant, and I could not see the expression of his face. Would he think we were coming to tell him that he had wasted all his love upon a girl not worthy of a tenth part of it?

The glass doors, which opened upon the lawn, had been thrown back all day, and we could see distinctly into the room. Martin was standing at the other end of it, apparently absorbed in examining a painting, which he must have seen a thousand times. The doors creaked a little as I passed through them, but he did not turn round. Jack gave my hand a parting squeeze, and left me there in the open doorway, scarcely knowing whether to go on, and speak to Martin, or run away to my room, and leave him to take his own time.

I believe I should have run away, but I heard Minima's voice behind me, calling shrilly to Dr. John, and I could not bear to face him again.

Taking my courage in both hands, I stepped quickly across the floor, for if I had hesitated longer my heart would have failed me. Scarcely a moment had passed since Jack left me, and Martin had not turned his head, yet it seemed an age.

"Martin," I whispered, as I stood close behind him, "how could you be so foolish as to send Dr. John to me?"

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-EIGHTH.

PALMY DAYS.

We were married as soon as the season was over, when Martin's fashionable patients were all going away from town. Ours was a very quiet wedding, for I had no friends on my side, and Martin's cousin Julia could not come, for she had a baby not a month old, and Captain Carey could not leave them. Johanna Carey and Minima were my bridesmaids, and Jack was Martin's groomsman.

On our way home from Switzerland, in the early autumn, we went down from Paris to Falaise, and through Noireau to Ville-en-bois. From Falaise every part of the road was full of associations to me. This was the long, weary journey which Minima and I had taken, alone, in a dark November night; and here were the narrow and dirty streets of Noireau, which we had so often trodden, cold, and hungry, and friendless. Martin said little about it, but I knew by his face, and by the tender care he lavished upon me, that his mind was as full of it as mine was.

There was no reason for us to stay even a day in Noireau, and we hurried through it on our way to Ville-en-bois. This road was still more memorable to me, for we had traversed it on foot.

"See, Martin!" I cried, "there is the trunk of the tree still, where Minima and I sat down to rest. I am glad the tree is there yet. If we were not in a hurry, you and I would sit there now; it is so lonely and still, and scarcely a creature passes this way. It is delicious to be lonely sometimes. How foot-sore and famished we were, walking along this rough part of the road! Martin, I almost wish our little Minima were with us. There is the common! If you will look steadily, you can just see the top of the cross, against the black line of fir-trees, on the far side."

I was getting so excited that I could speak no longer; but Martin held my hand in his, and I clasped it more and more tightly as we drew nearer to the cross, where Minima and I had sat down at the foot, forlorn and lost, in the dark shadows of the coming night. Was it possible that I was the same Olivia?

But as we came in sight of the little grove of cypresses and yews, we could discern a crowd of women, in their snow-white caps, and of men and boys, in blue blouses. The hollow beat of a drum reached our ears afar off, and after it the shrill notes of a violin and fife playing a merry tune. Monsieur Laurentie appeared in the foreground of the multitude, bareheaded, long before we reached the spot.

"O Martin!" I said, "let us get out, and send the carriage back, and walk up with them to the village."

"And my wife's luggage?" he answered, "and all the toys and presents she has brought from Paris?"

It was true that the carriage was inconveniently full of parcels, for I do not think that I had forgotten one of Monsieur Laurentie's people.

But it would not be possible to ride among them, while they were walking.

"Every man will carry something," I said. "Martin, I must get out."

It was Monsieur Laurentie who opened the carriage-door for me; but the people did not give him time for a ceremonious salutation. They thronged about us with _vivats_ as hearty as an English hurrah.

"All the world is here to meet us, monsieur," I said.

"Madame, I have also the honor of presenting to you two strangers from England," answered Monsieur Laurentie, while the people fell back to make way for them. Jack and Minima! both wild with delight. We learned afterward, as we marched up the valley to Ville-en-bois, that Dr. Senior had taken Jack's place in Brook Street, and insisted upon him and Minima giving us this surprise. Our procession, headed by the drum, the fife, and the violin, passed through the village street, from every window of which a little flag fluttered gayly, and stopped before the presbytery, where Monsieur Laurentie dismissed it, after a last _vivat_.

The next stage of our homeward journey was made in Monsieur Laurentie's _char a bancs_, from Ville-en-bois to Granville--Jack and Minima had returned direct to England, but we were to visit Guernsey on the way.

Captain Carey and Julia made it a point that we should go to see them, and their baby, before settling down in our London home. Martin was welcomed with almost as much enthusiasm in St. Peter-Port as I had been in little Ville-en-bois.

From our room in Captain Carey's house I could look at Sark lying along the sea, with a belt of foam encircling it. At times, early in the morning, or when the sunset light fell upon it, I could distinguish the old windmill, and the church breaking the level line of the summit; and I could even see the brow of the knoll behind Tardifs cottage. But day after day the sea between us was rough, and the westerly breeze blew across the Atlantic, driving the waves before it. There was no steamer going across, and Captain Carey's yacht could not brave the winds. I began to be afraid that Martin and I would not visit the place, which of all others in this half of the world was dearest to me.

"To-morrow," said Martin one night, after scanning the sunset, the sky, and the storm-glass, "if you can be up at five o'clock, we will cross to Sark."

I was up at four, in the first gray dawn of a September morning. We had the yacht to ourselves, for Captain Carey declined running the risk of being weather-bound on the island--a risk which we were willing to chance. The Havre Gosselin was still in morning shadow when we ran into it; but the water between us and Guernsey was sparkling and dancing in the early light, as we slowly climbed the rough path of the cliff. My eyes were dazzled with the sunshine, and dim with tears, when I first caught sight of the little cottage of Tardif, who was stretching out his nets, on the stone causeway under the windows. Martin called to him, and he flung down his nets and ran to meet us.

"We are come to spend the day with you, Tardif," I cried, when he was within hearing of my voice.

"It will be a day from heaven," he said, taking off his fisherman's cap, and looking round at the blue sky with its scattered clouds, and the sea with its scattered islets.

It was like a day from heaven. We wandered about the cliffs, visiting every spot which was most memorable to either of us, and Tardif rowed us in his boat past the entrance of the Gouliot Caves. He was very quiet, but he listened to our free talk together, for I could not think of good old Tardif as any stranger; and he seemed to watch us both, with a far-off, faithful, quiet look upon his face. Sometimes I fancied he did not bear what we were saying, and again his eyes would brighten with a sudden gleam, as if his whole soul and heart shone through them upon us.

It was the last day of our holiday, for in the morning we were about to return to London, and to work; but it was such a perfect day as I had never known before.

"You are quite happy, Mrs. Martin Dobree?" said Tardif to me, when we were parting from him.

"I did not know I could ever be so happy," I answered.

"We saw him to the last moment standing on the cliff, and waving his hat to us high above his head. Now and then there came a shout across the water. Before we were quite beyond ear-shot, we heard Tardif's voice calling amid the splashing of the waves:

"God be with you, my friends. Adieu, mam'zelle!"

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-NINTH.

A POSTSCRIPT BY MARTIN DOBReE.

You may describe to a second person, with the most minute and exact fidelity in your power, the leading and critical events in your life, and you will find that some trifle of his own experience is ten times more vivid to his mind. You narrate to your friend, whom you have not met for many years, the incident that has turned the whole current of your existence; and after a minute or two of musing, he asks you, "Do you remember the day we two went bird-nesting on Gull's Cliff?" That day of boyish daring and of narrow escapes is more real to him than your deepest troubles or keenest joys. The brain receives but slightly second-hand impressions.

I had told Olivia faithfully all my dilemmas with regard to Julia and the Careys; and she had seemed to listen with intense interest.

Certainly it was during those four bewildering and enchanted months immediately preceding our marriage, and no doubt the narrative was interwoven with many a topic of quite a different character. However that might be, I was surprised to find that Olivia was not half as nervous and anxious as I felt, when we were nearing Guernsey on our visit to Julia and Captain Carey. Julia had seen her but once, and that for a few minutes only in Sark. On her account she had suffered the severest mortification a woman can undergo. How would she receive my wife?

Olivia did not know, though I did, that Julia was somewhat frigid and distant in her manner, even while thoroughly hospitable in her welcome.

Olivia felt the hospitality; I felt the frigidity. Julia called her "Mrs. Dobree." It was the first time she had been addressed by that name; and her blush and smile were exquisite to me, but they did not thaw Julia in the least. I began to fear that there would be between them that strange, uncomfortable, east-wind coolness, which so often exists between the two women a man most loves.