as no unseemly Haste. It had long
been a cherished wish of their Hearts, and Eustace Fleming was a young
man of Promise and of rare Discretion."

There it ends. The record of Mary Twining is finished. With Mary
Fleming he has nothing to do. But where is the girl of ripened
understanding, of freedom of thought, of directness of purpose? We do
not know, for our biographer does not tell us. Was there a tragedy, and
were the details too heart-breaking for even the stoical Editor to
maintain his critical attitude?

Where is the gallant cavalier with his picturesque devotion, and his
vain toys of pretty speech and gesture and his fiery and over-weening
love and admiration for Mistress Mary Twining? He seemed to me a brave
and loyal sort of young fellow enough. I cannot tell. Put the quaint old
book back on the shelf, and let her romance rest again. But
notwithstanding her husband of such promise and rare discretion, I
cannot help sighing, "Poor Mary Twining!"

Fate and she had a difference, after all. And she was but twenty-one!

A Postlude

IT was almost time for the train to leave the station, and the seats
were filling rapidly. The Irishwoman, with four children so near of a
size that they seemed to be distinguished only by the variety of eatable
each one was consuming, had entered the car and deposited her large
newspaper bundle just inside the door, and driven her flock all into the
little end seat, where they were stowed uncomfortably, one on top of
another, gazing stolidly about the car. The young girl from the country
who had been spending Sunday in town, and who was, consequently,
somewhat overdressed for Monday morning, was wandering elegantly up and
down the aisle, losing each possible place for a prospective better one,
which became impossible before she reached it. The woman with a bag too
large for her to carry, rested it on the arm of an occupied seat while
she gazed vaguely about, indifferent to the fact that a crowd of
impatient travellers of more concrete intentions were being delayed by
her indecision. Meanwhile, among these disturbers of travel the man with
a large bag passed rapidly along, found a place, put the bag in the
rack, seated himself, and took out his newspaper. There is something in
a man's management of a large travelling-bag in a railway train that
leads the most unwilling to grudgingly yield him a certain superiority
of sex.

An exchange of good-bys, low-voiced but with a deci