“It was at Oxford that I first met her,” said the Rector in his mellow voice, which was touched with vague regret; “for she, too, dwelt in that grave scholastic city. I was not in holy orders then! No; my ambition was to be a soldier, and win the V.C.; but, alas! such dreams came to naught. You may not believe it, Maurice, but I was wild and light-hearted in those days—to be sure, it was Consula Planco, and youth is ever foolish. Her name was Miriam, and she was a dressmaker. Ah, you are astonished that I, Stephen Carriston, fixed my eyes on such a lowly damsel; but then, you see, I loved her dearly, and that, I think, is a sufficient answer to your unspoken objection. Love knows nothing of rank or position, and sees beauty in the wayside daisy as well as in the costly hothouse plant. I need not tell you she was very beautiful, for that is the common saying of lovers, who see no loveliness save in the nymph of their affections. What is it the poet says about a lover seeing Helen’s beauty in the brow of Egypt? Sure, my memory is weak with age, and I misquote. Still, the saying is true. Miriam was very beautiful, and I think must have had some Jewish blood in her veins, for her dark, imperial beauty was that of the East. Her hair was as dark as the wing of a raven, her eyes liquid wells of light, and her mouth was as the thread of scarlet spoken of in the song of the wise king. You see, Maurice, old as I am, I can still rhapsodize on Chloe’s perfections, though she basely deceived me. Alas, Strephon! how the years have destroyed thy goddess!—nay, she destroyed herself by her own act.” “I did not know you were a poet, Rector.” Mr. Carriston, whose brow was dark with bitter memories, aroused himself with a forced laugh, and strove to speak lightly of the past. “Live and learn, Maurice. I no poet? Why, my dear lad, I am even now courting the Nine, and turning Aristophanes into good English verse. No poet? Why, every man is a poet when in love; and if he does not write a poem, he at least lives a poem. I, alas, have been in love these many years with a shadow—the shadow of Miriam before she left me!” “Left you?” “Yes. I call it my romance, but it is a painful story. A deceitful woman, a wronged man, a treacherous friend—a common enough tale, I think. Though, indeed, I need not include ‘friend,’ for to this day I know not for whom she left me.” “She was your wife?” “Yes. Wild as I was in those days, I was too honorable to deceive a woman. In spite of the difference of our position, I married her, and we were happy together for ten years.” “Ten years!” replied Maurice in surprise. “Surely she did not leave you after all that time of married happiness.” “Who knows the ways of women?” said the Rector bitterly. “Yes, she left me—took from me all I loved in the world, herself and her child.” “Was there a child?”