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about her, and yet I was prepared to fight in the assurance that she possessed every virtue and every grace of character which I have since proved in her. This is the folly of love; but it is at the same time that which makes it so beautiful. Most young men, and most young women, live to be disillusioned. But I fell in love with better fortune, if with no more discretion, than the average man displays, and after many years of trial and happiness I know my wife to be a better woman than I had power to guess all those years ago. And I know, as every husband of a good wife knows, that I was a much better man than I could ever have been without her influence. All this leads me away from what I meant to say, which was simply that Miss Rossano's wordless reception of Brunow made me furiously jealous of him, and altogether dashed my happiness. She had spoken to me--_ergo_, she could speak. She had not spoken to him--_ergo_, the emotion of encountering him was too great for her. We had been six years married when I told her of this. I saw her with both hands reached out to help her father into the carriage. I saw her beautiful face, so soft and serious and lofty in its look that I have no words to say how it touched me. The carriage drove away. Hinge shouldered our bit of luggage easily, and Brunow and I walked up to the hotel side by side. We were met in the hall by a waiter who asked us if we would go to Lady Rollinson's sitting-room in half an hour, and then Brunow and I went to a private room of our own, and drank each a pint of English ale, as every Englishman did on reaching the Lord Warden in those days. It was a libation to liberty, the health of welcome home which the loneliest traveller poured when he felt himself upon his native land again after an absence however temporary. When we had got through this ceremony we sat glum and silent enough, and I have since thought it likely that Brunow was as much hurt at the difference in our greetings as I had been. For Miss Rossano had thanked me in words and had not spoken to him, and he was probably reading the thing the other way about. But he was much more at home within himself than I was, and at any time I don't think he was capable of any very deep feeling. Perhaps I do him less than justice, and we are all apt to think our sensations more striking and real than those of other people. At the appointed time we went out into the corridor and walked to the room which
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