But, woe is me! Donald still languished and prayed for Euphemia Noble. And one day in Glasgow, lo, he met her! She was only a governess to some very young children. What of that? All Donald's love returned in double force, and he determined to marry her.
It is the old story: the girl consented at last. Then Donald tried to win his mother over. But that stern Highland dowager was inexorable. If he married this wretched governess—doubtless some designing minx and hussy—he should never again darken the doors of Drumglen.
Donald looked at her in sadness and sorrow, and though one sleeve was empty, a very gallant and soldierly man he was. But there was no relenting in his tall, stern, and dignified mother.
"Good-bye."
That was all Donald either said or sighed. He just turned on his heel and walked away as he was—and never once looked back.
The mother gazed after him through the window, till the trees hid him from her view; then she shut herself up in her rooms for days, and no one, not even her maid, knew all that proud woman suffered during this time.
After her marriage with her one-armed soldier, Euphemia and he lived in a tiny cottage down the Clyde. They were so poor that it was difficult indeed to get ends to meet, even in a semi-genteel kind of way. But they were rich in each other's love. And so they struggled on and on for years.
Alas that I should have to tell it! Lieutenant Mackenzie in an evil hour was induced to enter the betting ring. From that hour his downfall may have been dated. It is too sad a story to tell. Instead of the pretty little cottage on the banks of the romantic Clyde, his wife and he were soon occupying rooms in a somewhat squalid quarter of great Glasgow.
How it happened I do not know, but one evening Donald was missing, and he did not return all the next day; but in the gloom of the gloaming a strange man called on Mrs. Mackenzie, and when she saw him she burst at once into an agony of grief that cannot easily be described.
It ended in her leaving her two children to the charge of a neighbour and going away in a cab with the stranger—to a mortuary.