involved I never knew, but she felt that she could not promise to
marry him. Her mother was an invalid, and her father a delightful,
scholarly, autocratic, selfish old gentleman, who ruled his
household with a rod of iron. Salemina coddled and nursed them both
during all her young life; indeed, little as she realised it, she
never had any separate existence or individuality until they both
died, when she was thirty-one or two years old."

"And what became of the young Irishman? Was he faithful to his
first love, or did he marry?"

"He married, many years afterward, and that was the time I first
heard the story. His marriage took place in Dublin, on the very
day, I believe, that Salemina's father was buried; for Fate has the
most relentless way of arranging these coincidences. I don't
remember his name, and I don't know where he lives or what has
become of him. I imagine the romance has been dead and buried in
rose-leaves for years; Salemina never has spoken of it to me, but it
would account for her sentimental championship of Ireland."



Chapter IX. The light of other days.

'Oft in the stilly night,
Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
Fond memory brings the light
Of other days around me.'
Thomas Moore.