The courtship of Harold Keene and Sophia Rutledge had been very short, and their wedding sudden. He had met the young English girl in London near the close of the season; had seen her first in her court-dress, at her presentation; and had afterward spent ten days with her at a country house. Their mutual attraction had been a current which had swept everything before it; and when it had to be decided whether or not she should go on a voyage to Japan with her aunt, as had been planned,--a prospect which would separate them for months to come,--they took things into their own hands, and were married at short notice. The parents of Miss Rutledge were both dead. Her father, an Englishman, had married a Russian; and it was her mother’s sister with whom she was supposed to live, though she had spent most of her grownup years, and all of her childhood, in England. Her aunt was now a widow and a feverishly enthusiastic traveler, and the girl had looked forward with some pleasure to the long travels ahead of them. Her sudden marriage to the young American, introduced to her by some common friends, changed her life absolutely; but Harold was determined that she should realize at least one of her ardent dreams of travel, and take a journey up the Nile. Soon after their marriage they had set out on this journey, and the history of its rapturous beginning and miserable ending was known only to themselves. In this way it had happened that Harold’s wife had never been seen by his family, and he had even declined to send them a photograph of her. He said he disliked photographs, and none could ever give a fair representation of his beautiful wife. He wrote Martha that she must do her best to restrain her impatience, as they were to come at once to America at the end of their honeymoon on the Nile, and to make their home there, while he settled down to work. Instead of this, however, came the brief announcement of their separation, which almost broke Martha’s heart. She had put aside any natural feeling of deprivation and pain, to throw herself, heart and soul, into the delight of Harold’s romantic marriage, and as the young couple dreamed their way up the old Nile, she dreamed it with them. It is probable that few people in the world get the intense joy out of their personal experiences of love that this ardent and impassioned girl derived from the mere imagination of her brother’s happiness. The blow that followed it was therefore very keen and deep. The courage and complete reserve which her brother had shown in the matter had given her strength to bear it; but, in spite of that, a permanent shadow had been cast upon her life. XI