To himself he was saying how strangely like, and yet how strangely unlike, it was to the name of which she seemed the ideal embodiment.
“Ireen,” he said over to himself, and the drums of his ears almost chimed back—but alas! failed quite to chime.
“Ireen? Ireen?” he said over and over to himself, trying to make the name sound right, and, when he found it impossible, he looked again at her young loveliness, and wondered to himself if her name was not near enough to the name he loved.
But in the end his superstition prevailed, and reluctantly he bade good-bye to Ireen Stanbery, and took train for New York, and boarded his liner, and sailed back to Europe sad at heart.
A year went by, and having given up all hopes of finding his Irene, he married, as I have said, a lady of the name of——, and was very happy—that is as happy as a man or woman can be who has married the wrong name.
He had been married about three years, when he chanced one evening to be dining in London with an American gentleman.
They compared notes on America.
“Do you know the Stanberys of Chicago?” asked my friend, among other questions.
“O yes! aren’t they delightful people? And what a beautiful girl Irene is—she was married six months ago by the way.”
“What name did you call her?” asked my friend.