wish it to
be clearly understood that the engagement was broken off by Miss
Brandon, not by me. If you hear any man speak disparagingly of her in
connection with what has passed, you can insult him on my behalf as
grossly as you please. I will be here, as fast as steam can bring me, to
back what you may have said or done. This is the only point in which I
hope you will guard my honor. As for blaming _me_, they may say what
they please. Do you quite understand? And will you promise?"

I did promise; and so, after a few more last words, we parted, more
coldly than we had ever done in all the years through which we had been
intimate.

Guy left England the same evening, and descended like a thunder-clap on
the joyous little _menage_ in the Rue de la Madeleine, where Forrester
and his bride were still fluttering their wings in the honeymoon-shine
of post-nuptial spring.

They were miraculously happy, those two. Indeed, they seemed to have
only one taste between them, and that was Charley's. If he felt
inclined, which was not seldom, to utter inaction, his wife encouraged
him in his laziness, sitting contentedly for hours on her footstool,
with her silky hair just within reach of his indolent hand. If, after
dinner, he suggested the "Italiens," or the "Bouffes," it was always
precisely that theatre that she had been thinking of all the morning.
She was in the seventh heaven when he won a hurdle-race in the Champ de
Mars.

They made excursions into the _banlieue_, and farther afield yet, like a
couple of the _Pays Latin_ in their first loves. The cabinets of Bercy
and St. Cloud knew them; so did the arbors of Asnieres, where, in
oilskin and _vareuse_, muster for their Sabbat the ancient mariners of
the Seine. Nay, it has been whispered that more than once--close veiled
and clinging tightly to her husband's arm--Isabel witnessed at _Mabille_
and the _Chaumiere_ the choregraphic triumphs of _Frisette_, _Pomare_,
and _Mogador_.

My hand trembles while I record such enormities and backslidings. O
Brougham-girls of Belgravia, who "never gave your mothers a moment's
uneasiness"--stars of the Western hemisphere, who can be trusted any
where without fear of your wandering from your orbits--think on this
lost Pleiad, once your companion, and be warned. Men are deceivers ever,
even when they mean matrimony; and the tender mercies of the Light
Dragoon are cruel.

Isabel was dreadfully startled at the sudden appearance of her cou