worked hard and walked fast; he defied convention and challenged fate.
With a stout heart he laboured to raise Carry to the level of his
affections, and with a strong hand he tightened his hold upon her. He
loved her passionately, devotedly, and she, clinging to him as to the
instrument of her salvation, gradually regained her better self, and,
slowly but surely, learnt to find in her own heart the greatest of
treasures that woman can bestow upon man. But he was a Southerner of
the French meridional type, excitable and impulsive, and, so, alas!
he was jealous of Carry's northern friends and snapped the thread
asunder that bound her to them. We only knew, and that we learnt in
a roundabout way, that she was the happiest little wife in Paris.
Once, and only once, she wrote to us, to tell us how complete was
her happiness. A crowning glory had come; a little glory to nurse
and fondle, to cry over--tears of joy; to smile to--the prettiest,
foolishest of mother's smiles; to pray for and to worship from the
bottom of her little blossoming soul. It was not till three years
later that I was in Paris and succeeded in picking up the thread of
Carry's story. Hale and hearty, overflowing with health and happiness,
the young doctor had gone to his work at the hospital. He came
home blood-poisoned, to die in his wife's arms. It was a case of
self-sacrifice in the cause of science, of heroic devotion to a
fellow-creature. And the young widow was left alone again, with none
to weep over (tears of anguish this time) but the little glory, who,
poor thing, could only wonder, but not soothe. What can have become
of Carry once more cast adrift in Paris to fight the battle of life in
this hard ever love-making world?

We never knew.

Back to England. The time had come when--

"Who was to be lucky and who to be rich,
Who'd get to the top of the tree;
Was a mystery which
Dame Fortune, the witch,
_Was_ to tell du Maurier and me."

[Illustration]

What with the boxing-gloves and one thing and another, he had been
"getting English again by degrees." In a drawing he shows us how he
is going through the process arm-in-arm with his old friend, Tom
Armstrong, now the Art-Director of that very English institution, the
South Kensington Museum. Armstrong and T.R. Lamont, the man who to
this day bears such a striking resemblance to our friend the Laird,
had presented du Maurier with a complete edition of Edgar Allan Poe's
works. His ap