* * * * * * * * *
What need to set down more--what more have I to say?
Only this. That never would she hear of redeeming any of that second fortune which her unhappy father had left in the custody of the priest in the Indies who had once been as he himself was; and consequently, that from the time we became man and wife no further intercourse was ever held between us and those far-off islands from which she came. Nor was that fortune wanted--God has ever been good to us; I have prospered exceedingly in my soldier's calling; all is very well.
Of him, Gramont, we have never heard more. Yet that, somewhere, he is, if still alive, expiating his past I have never doubted. The truth was in the man's eyes as he spoke to me on that morning when he went forth broken-hearted from the house which held his child; the truth, and a firm determination to atone by suffering and hardship for all that he had done. And what stronger or more stern resolve could any sinner have taken than that of his? The determination to tear himself away forever from the companionship of his newly found daughter, and to remove thereby from her forever the shame of his presence.
"Come, Mervan," she said to me, as now the autumn evening turned to night, and from every house in Fleet street the illuminations began to glisten. "Come, you must prepare for the city banquet."
"Nay," I said, "nay. I need no banquets, would prefer to stay here by your side."
"And so I would you should do. Yet you must go. I will not have you absent from so great a thing. You! my hero--my king. And while you are gone I will watch over our child, or solace myself with this."
And as she spoke she went over to where the spinet was, and touched a smaller instrument that lay upon it--the little viol d'amore from which we have never parted, and never will.