k, and not
particularly good-looking; and when he walked about with his betrothed,
it was half a matter of surprise that he should have ventured to propose
to a young lady of such heroic proportions. Miss Leary had the gray eyes
and auburn hair which I have always assigned to the famous statue. The
one defect in her face, in spite of an expression of great candor and
sweetness, was a certain lack of animation. What it was besides her
beauty that attracted Locksley I never discovered: perhaps, since his
attachment was so short-lived, it was her beauty alone. I say that his
attachment was of brief duration, because the rupture was understood to
have come from him. Both he and Miss Leary very wisely held their
tongues on the matter; but among their friends and enemies it of course
received a hundred explanations. That most popular with Locksley's
well-wishers was, that he had backed out (these events are discussed,
you know, in fashionable circles very much as an expected prize-fight
which has miscarried is canvassed in reunions of another kind) only on
flagrant evidence of the lady's--what, faithlessness?--on overwhelming
proof of the most _mercenary_ spirit on the part of Miss Leary. You see,
our friend was held capable of doing battle for an "idea." It must be
owned that this was a novel charge; but, for myself, having long known
Mrs. Leary, the mother, who was a widow with four daughters, to be an
inveterate old screw, I took the liberty of accrediting the existence of
a similar propensity in her eldest born. I suppose that the young lady's
family had, on their own side, a very plausible version of their
disappointment. It was, however, soon made up to them by Josephine's
marriage with a gentleman of expectations very nearly as brilliant as
those of her old suitor. And what was _his_ compensation? That is
precisely my story.

Locksley disappeared, as you will remember from public view. The events
above alluded to happened in March. On calling at his lodgings in April,
I was told he had gone to the "country." But towards the last of May I
met him. He told me that he was on the look-out for a quiet,
unfrequented place on the sea-shore, where he might rusticate and
sketch. He was looking very poorly. I suggested Newport, and I remember
he hardly had the energy to smile at the simple joke. We parted without
my having been able to satisfy him, and for a very long time I quite
lost sight of him. He died seven years ago, at t