“I have flung my life away, for what is life without happiness?” he was saying to himself, with impatient wrath when he passed Nina upon the sands that gray March afternoon, and he started with sudden admiration and delight at sight of her and forgot his bitter thoughts for a moment, for the girl was wonderfully lovely in her scarlet dress and cap with the loose gold curls of her hair falling around her like a veil of sunshine. He thought too, that the magnificent Newfoundland added a picturesque touch to the lovely picture, but he had forgotten the episode of the “great big black Newfoundland puppy” that had so disgusted him at the time. In his thoughts he had forgotten to make allowance for the lapse of time too, just as Nina had forgotten that five years had improved her so much that it was a compliment to her beauty when her husband failed to know her. “What a charming girl! A new edition of Una and the Lion,” he thought as he bowed and passed on his way. CHAPTER V. “NOTHING CAN UNDO THE FOLLY OF FIVE YEARS AGO.” Miss Drusilla Strangemore, Talbot’s aunt, was a tall angular lady in the fifties--a lady who detested men and whose opinion of the sex in general had not been improved by what she called the “shilly-shallying” of her absent nephew. “Dawdling over Europe these five years and more, leaving his poor little wife at home in this great, lonely house with nothing but me and the servants for company, not but what she thinks more of the black dog Talbot sent her than of the whole of us,” she would mutter to herself. “I say it’s a shame and a sin for him to neglect her so, and she bearing it all so patiently, and never breathing a word of complaint, although he has not even written her a letter for a year and more! I never liked men any how, and I like them less than ever now, seeing how shamefully my nephew has treated the poor little ignorant child, his mother fooled into marrying him just for the sake of the fortune her father left her!” For this was the way that Mrs. Selwyn’s sister-in-law and the world at large regarded the strange marriage of Talbot and Nina. It was considered in the light of a purely mercenary scheme in which the innocent little heiress had been made the victim of a designing mother and son. But no one, not even the sour old maid, dared hint to the pure young maiden-wife that she had been married for her money. Her trust in her absent husband was too flawless and perfect, her worship too entire and deep to admit of a doubt of him. Most purely and earnestly had she kept her vow that she would give all her life and all her love to him. And now Miss Strangemore who was leisurely taking a cup of tea and some seed cakes in the cozy privacy of her own chamber was startled by the entrance of a servant who carried upon a salver a masculine looking square white card----she almost dropped the china cup out of her shaking fingers when she read upon it the name of Talbot Strangemore.