ine. Mary is
with her husband, enjoying her new privileges, learning her new duties,
as a wife. She, too, is living in Scotland--living, by a strange
fatality, not very far distant from my country-house. I have no
suspicion that she is so near to me: the name of Mrs. Van Brandt (even
if I had heard it) appeals to no familiar association in my mind. Still
the kindred spirits are parted. Still there is no idea on her side, and
no idea on mine, that we shall ever meet again.

CHAPTER VII. THE WOMAN ON THE BRIDGE.

MY mother looked in at the library door, and disturbed me over my books.

"I have been hanging a little picture in my room," she said. "Come
upstairs, my dear, and give me your opinion of it."

I rose and followed her. She pointed to a miniature portrait, hanging
above the mantelpiece.

"Do you know whose likeness that is?" she asked, half sadly, half
playfully. "George! Do you really not recognize yourself at thirteen
years old?"

How should I recognize myself? Worn by sickness and sorrow; browned by
the sun on my long homeward voyage; my hair already growing thin over
my forehead; my eyes already habituated to their one sad and weary look;
what had I in common with the fair, plump, curly-headed, bright-eyed
boy who confronted me in the miniature? The mere sight of the portrait
produced the most extraordinary effect on my mind. It struck me with
an overwhelming melancholy; it filled me with a despair of myself too
dreadful to be endured. Making the best excuse I could to my mother, I
left the room. In another minute I was out of the house.

I crossed the park, and left my own possessions behind me. Following
a by-road, I came to our well-known river; so beautiful in itself, so
famous among trout-fishers throughout Scotland. It was not then the
fishing season. No human being was in sight as I took my seat on the
bank. The old stone bridge which spanned the stream was within a hundred
yards of me; the setting sun still tinged the swift-flowing water under
the arches with its red and dying light.

Still the boy's face in the miniature pursued me. Still the portrait
seemed to reproach me in a merciless language of its own: "Look at what
you were once; think of what you are now!"

I hid my face in the soft, fragrant grass. I thought of the wasted years
of my life between thirteen and twenty-three.

How was it to end? If I lived to the ordinary life of man, what prospect
had I before me?

Love? Marriage?