In the eyes of Madame de Crespigney, the pale Eusebie seemed a very eligible match for her portionless son. Report had exaggerated the riches of the co-heiresses. The elder sister had married a Portuguese grandee. Altogether the connection seemed a good one in a social and financial point of view. Of course, Madame de Crespigney did not set the matter before her son in that light. She knew Marcel too well. She adroitly directed his attention to the delicate girl, and enlisted his sympathies for her, so that he soon perceived how the pale cheeks would flush, and the dim eyes fire, and the whole plain face grow radiant and beautiful in the love-light of his presence. His heart was free, and so he became interested in her. He thought she was the first who had ever loved him, and so he grew to believe that he loved her. At least he proposed to her and was accepted. As the young officer had but a month’s leave before joining his regiment, that was under orders to march for Mexico to join General Scott’s army on the first of September, and as the bride-elect decided to accompany her intended husband, “even to the battlefield,” the engagement was a short one. The wedding was hurried. On the morning of the twenty-fifth of August the young couple were quietly married in the nearest church, and immediately after the ceremony they set out for Washington, where Lieutenant de Crespigney joined his regiment, which was on the eve of departure for the seat of war. I do not mean here to tell over again, even the least part, the oft-repeated story of the Mexican War, but only to allude in the briefest manner to Marcel de Crespigney’s share in it. He went to Mexico, accompanied by his bride, who was with him wherever duty called. She spent the first three years of her married life in camps, on battle-fields, and in hospitals, and so did her woman’s share of the work. He behaved gallantly from first to last, as is best shown by his military record. For, having entered the service at the beginning of the war with the rank of second lieutenant of cavalry, he left it at the close with that of colonel and brevet brigadier-general. At the earliest solicitation of his wife, he then resigned his commission and retired with her to private life, on her estate at Pirates’ Promontory, the principal wealth of which consisted in its great fisheries. No children had come to them to crown their union, and this want had been a source of disappointment to the husband and humiliation to the wife, that even threatened in the course of time to estrange them from each other. They must have continued to live a very lonely life on their remote estate—“the world forgetting, by the world forgot”—but for circumstances that occurred in the first year of their residence at the Promontory.