"I must go back more than seventeen years to the romance of my life," he said. "I was barely twenty-one, then, an eager, impetuous, romantic boy, chafing at the rein my father tried to hold over me, and disgusted with the idea of the mariage de convenance he had arranged for me."
He sighed, and resumed:
"Nellie Ford, my cousin, who was away at a fashionable boarding-school, sent me an invitation to a musical soiree. I went, carelessly enough, and at that entertainment I met my fate—a blue-eyed girl looking much as Irene does now.
"She was not only beautiful, she was gifted with the sweetest voice I ever heard," he continued. "She sang, and I was enraptured. I sought and obtained an introduction to my divinity. Before we parted that evening my heart was irrevocably lost to sweet Elaine Brooke."
Heavy sighs rippled over his lips as he paused and seemed to contemplate in fancy the fair, flower-face, so long ago lost out of his life.
"That was not the last time we met," he continued. "Both loved, although it seemed indeed a mad, hopeless passion. I was destined to Lilia Lessington, and Elaine's ambitious mother intended to make a pedant of her daughter. She was destined to several years at Vassar College. Young blood flows hastily, you know, Mrs. Leslie," with a sad smile. "The hopelessness of my love maddened me. I persuaded my darling to elope with me to a distant city, where we were married."
"All for love, and the world well-lost," Mrs. Leslie quoted.
"Well-lost, indeed, if only she had been true," Clarence Stuart answered, with one of those long, labored sighs, that seem to cleave a strong man's heart in twain.
He was silent a few moments then, watching with gloomy eyes the softly lapsing river, on which the haze of twilight began to fall—
"So life runs away," he said, sadly. "Wave by wave, in sunshine or shadow. Ah! my old friend, the stream of my life has flowed for more than sixteen years in the shadow of a great sorrow. Only a few months of happiness were granted me with my beautiful bride."