"And why did you prefer me?" She answered quite archly:
"The rose is red, the violet's blue,
Sugar is sweet and so are you."
"I chose you because of your worth. When I was young, I married for beauty and I pierced my heart through with many sorrows."
"You been married?" said Annette with a tremor in her tones. "Why, I never heard of it before."
"Did not Mr. Thomas or Mrs. Lasette tell you of it? They knew it, but it is one of the saddest passages of my life, to which I scarcely ever refer. She, my wife, drifted from me, and was drowned in a freshet near Orleans."
"Oh, how dreadful, and I never knew it."
"Does it pain you?"
"No, but it astonishes me."
"Well, Annette, it is not a pleasant subject, let us talk of something else. I have not spoken of it to you before, but to-day, when it pressed so painfully upon my mind, it was a relief to me to tell you about it, but now darling dismiss it from your mind and let the dead past bury its dead."
Just then there came along where they were sitting a woman whose face bore traces of great beauty, but dimmed and impaired by lines of sorrow and disappointment. Just as she reached the seat where they were sitting, she threw up her hands in sudden anguish, gasped out, "Clarence! my long lost Clarence," and fell at his feet in a dead faint.