conscious when hauled into safety,
and that ensign, said Marion, was the man she would marry. She was less
than sixteen and had never seen him. The nearest approach to a desperate
intimacy she ever had was with that fellow's sister: a girl of hitherto
faint attractions. At last the ensign came to the school,--such a day of
excitement!--and as a great, a _very_ great concession, Madame had
permitted that he should be allowed in her presence to speak with his
sister's most intimate friends. She was threatened with popularity for
the time being, and Marion was presented. The hero of her four months'
dream was a stoutly-built youth of twenty-five, with florid complexion
and hair, and a manner so painfully shy and embarrassed that additional
color was lent to his sun-blistered features. He had faced death without
a tremor and, in the most matter-of-fact way in the world, had saved
three lives at the imminent risk of his own, but he could not face these
wide-eyed, worshipping school-girls, and was manifestly ill at ease in a
very unbecoming civilian suit. Still, he wriggled through the interview
and made his escape, leaving only a modified sensation behind. The fatal
_coup_ occurred next day when, as prearranged, he came to say farewell.
This time Jack Tar had braced for the occasion, and was unexpectedly
hilarious and demonstrative. In bidding good-by to his sister he had
effusively embraced her, then turned suddenly upon Marion, and before
she could dream of what was coming, had caught her in his arms and
imprinted upon her fresh young lips a bacchanalian salute that left
thereon a mingled essence of Angostura bitters, cloves, and tobacco, and
drove her in dismay and confusion from the room to seek her own in a
passion of angry tears and disenchantment. Never before in her life had
she known such an affront. Never for long afterwards did she worship
modern heroes.

But while she sought no intimacies, as a school-girl her friendship and
affection for Grace Pelham strengthened with every week of their
association. Their last two years at school were spent as room-mates,
and then Marion had gone almost immediately abroad. Some hint has been
conveyed to the reader of a domestic unpleasantness in the Sanford
homestead. Sanford paterfamilias was a successful business man of large
means and small sensibilities. His first wife, Marion's mother, was a
New York beauty, a sweet, sensitive, refined, and delicate girl; in
fine, "a sacri