"How long ago it all seems, and yet how recent. It might have been yesterday that slim young Sylvester, in his Sunday coat, and with his best stock about his neck, went with hanging head from this house, and my father, red with rage, stood brandishing his cane at him for daring to aspire to the hand of his daughter; while I, poor fool, looked from a window above and laughed. I had so many lovers that I could afford to surrender one. However, I liked him more than I at the time suspected," she went on with more vigour, "though you must not tell your wife any story about a spoiled love match. I have not married because I have chosen to remain single. Middle age and old age are practical. Youth is a far away dream. I did not suffer much, and your father certainly soon consoled himself with a woman better fitted to be a Puritan's wife than dancing Jane Gastonguay ever was. Don't you think so?" and she peered into his face. Justin, in his stubborn honesty, would not discuss the matter with her. She had flirted with his father and broken his heart, thereby promoting him to saintship gained through much suffering, and he strongly suspected that she had also broken her own heart, and that her peculiarities were the result of this perversion of her feminine nature. She should have married and become the contented mother of a family. Miss Gastonguay, as if comprehending his thoughts, changed the subject of conversation. "Has my brother Louis any children beside this one?" "No." "Who was this girl's mother?" "A fair-haired German girl with a beautiful Christian character. She was a school-teacher whom my wife's father met in some boarding-house. I gathered from what he told me, that, having learned after marriage what he really was, she faded away and died, first making him promise to carefully educate her child." "Did Louis love her?" "He broke down in telling me about her." "He always had a long head, had Louis. It looks to me as if he deliberately laid a scheme to have you marry his daughter." "I think he did." "And you lent yourself to it?" "I should most certainly not have done so had she been other than she is." "You have gained a prize matrimonially." Justin's face glowed. "I am not a man of easy speech," he said, simply, "but I can speak freely to you, and I know you will be interested in hearing that no opinion you can form of my wife will be too high a one. I wish I could describe to you her gentleness and amiability. Little by little she has undertaken the duties of a wife that I was slow to urge upon her. I wished to keep her a happy girl for a time, but the torture of leaving her father brought on a crisis. She began to ask questions, to examine herself, to study me and my relations to her, and now she has put girlhood far behind her, and is getting a firm grasp of things material and spiritual." "Religion and love," said Miss Gastonguay, with a sigh, "you have both,--or think you have. You ought to be happy."