Then, though she spoke no audible word, my heart heard her say:
“Look in my face; my name is Might-Have-Been; I am also called No-More, Too-Late, Farewell.”
On one of her beautiful fingers my sad eyes had caught the glimmer of a small gold band—and, once more as we passed away from each other, my bitter heart mocked at its own bitterness, and remembering my boyish fairy-tales, I said to myself:
“The Princess has found her wedding ring!”
And that was my last meeting with Princess Once-Upon-a-Time.
THE LITTLE JOYS OF MARGARET
MARGARET had seen her five sisters one by one leave the family nest to set up little nests of their own. Her brother, the eldest child of a family of seven, had left the old home almost beyond memory and settled in London. Now and again he made a flying visit to the small provincial town of his birth, and sometimes he sent two little daughters to represent him—for he was already a widowed man and relied occasionally on the old roof-tree to replace the lost mother. Margaret had seen what sympathetic spectators called her “fate” slowly approaching for some time—particularly when, five years ago, she had broken off her engagement with a worthless boy. She had loved him deeply, and, had she loved him less, a refined girl in the provinces does not find it easy to replace a discarded suitor—for the choice of young men is not excessive. Her sisters had been more fortunate, and so, as I have said, one by one they left their father’s door in bridal veils. But Margaret stayed on, and at length, as had been foreseen, became the sole nurse of a beautiful old invalid mother, a kind of lay sister in the nunnery of home.