I do not mean here to tell over again, even the least part, the oft-repeated story of the Mexican War, but only to allude in the briefest manner to Marcel de Crespigney’s share in it. He went to Mexico, accompanied by his bride, who was with him wherever duty called.
She spent the first three years of her married life in camps, on battle-fields, and in hospitals, and so did her woman’s share of the work.
He behaved gallantly from first to last, as is best shown by his military record. For, having entered the service at the beginning of the war with the rank of second lieutenant of cavalry, he left it at the close with that of colonel and brevet brigadier-general.
At the earliest solicitation of his wife, he then resigned his commission and retired with her to private life, on her estate at Pirates’ Promontory, the principal wealth of which consisted in its great fisheries.
No children had come to them to crown their union, and this want had been a source of disappointment to the husband and humiliation to the wife, that even threatened in the course of time to estrange them from each other.
They must have continued to live a very lonely life on their remote estate—“the world forgetting, by the world forgot”—but for circumstances that occurred in the first year of their residence at the Promontory.
These were the deaths of the aged Count de la Vera and his fragile young wife, who passed away within a few days of each other, leaving their orphan child, Maria de Gloria, to the care of her maternal aunt and uncle, who gladly received her.
CHAPTER II
MARIA GLORIA DE LA VERA
A willful elf, an uncle’s child,
And half a pet and half a pest,