“I fully expected to have been in France before this time, but have stayed on for what reason I hardly know. It is very pleasant here, and my sister’s health is such that I dislike to leave her so soon, even though I leave her in excellent hands. Miss Edith is certainly a very remarkable person, and I am more interested in her than I have been in any one since I first met my dear Emily.” Here the colonel paused, and laying down his pen went back in thought to the time when he was young and first met Emily Rossiter, the proud, pale, light-haired girl, whose two hundred thousand in prospect had made her a belle in society, and little as he liked to own it now that the daisies were growing above her, had commended her to his consideration. His courtship was short, and wholly void of passion or ecstasy. She knew he was a suitable match and she wished to go abroad, and accepted him readily enough, and they were married without so much as a kiss exchanged between them. He had so far unbent from his cold dignity as to hold her hand in his own while he asked her to be his wife, but as soon as her promise was given he put it back in her lap very respectfully, and said, “That hand is now mine,” and that was the nearest approach to love-making which he reached with Emily. After marriage he was scarcely more demonstrative, though always kind and considerate, and when at her father’s death it was found that her fortune was one hundred thousand instead of two, he kept it to himself if he felt any chagrin, and never in a single instance checked her extravagance, but suffered her in everything to have her way. At the last, however, when she stood face to face with death, and her life with him lay all behind, there came a change, and he could yet feel the passionate kiss which the white lips pressed upon his as they called him “dear husband.” “Poor Emily,” he said, aloud; “we were very happy together.”