Poor Marian!—wanton Marian!—was it so, Or so? For days, her touching, foolish lines We mused on with conjectural fantasy, As if some riddle of a summer-cloud On which one tries unlike similitudes Of now a spotted Hydra-skin cast off, And now a screen of carven ivory That shuts the heavens’ conventual secrets up From mortals over-bold. We sought the sense: She loved him so perhaps, (such words mean love,) That, worked on by some shrewd perfidious tongue, (And then I thought of Lady Waldemar) She left him, not to hurt him; or perhaps She loved one in her class,—or did not love, But mused upon her wild bad tramping life, Until the free blood fluttered at her heart, And black bread eaten by the road-side hedge Seemed sweeter than being put to Romney’s school Of philanthropical self-sacrifice, Irrevocably.—Girls are girls, beside, Thought I, and like a wedding by one rule. You seldom catch these birds, except with chaff: They feel it almost an immoral thing To go out and be married in broad day, Unless some winning special flattery should Excuse them to themselves for’t, ... ‘No one parts Her hair with such a silver line as you, One moonbeam from the forehead to the crown!’ Or else ... ‘You bite your lip in such a way, It spoils me for the smiling of the rest’— And so on. Then a worthless gaud or two, To keep for love,—a ribbon for the neck, Or some glass pin,—they have their weight with girls. And Romney sought her many days and weeks: He sifted all the refuse of the town, Explored the trains, enquired among the ships, And felt the country through from end to end; No Marian!—Though I hinted what I knew,— A friend of his had reasons of her own For throwing back the match—he would not hear: The lady had been ailing ever since, The shock had harmed her. Something in his tone Repressed me; something in me shamed my doubt To a sigh, repressed too. He went on to say That, putting questions where his Marian lodged, He found she had received for visitors, Besides himself and Lady Waldemar And, that once, me—a dubious woman dressed Beyond us both. The rings upon her hands Had dazed the children when she threw them pence; ‘She wore her bonnet as the queen might hers, To show the crown,’ they said,—‘a scarlet crown Of roses that had never been in bud.’