irl
wept and loved me, and thenceforth made life miserable for me among my
schoolmates by acts of 'favoritism.'"

In the little rose-covered cottage in Oakland a second son, Hervey,
was born to the Osbournes. He was an extraordinarily beautiful child,
with the rare combination of large dark eyes and yellow curls, but
there was an ethereal look about him that boded no long stay on this
earthly sphere.

It was perhaps partly to fill a great void that she began to feel in
her life that Mrs. Osbourne took up the study of art in the School of
Design conducted by Virgil Williams in San Francisco. Mother and
daughter studied there side by side. While there Mrs. Osbourne won the
prize, a silver medal, for the best drawing. She seemed not to value
it at the time, but after her death her daughter found it in a little
box laid away in her jewel-case.

When the little yellow-haired boy was about four years old, the cloud
which had menaced the happiness of the family for so long again
descended upon them. For years Mrs. Osbourne had made earnest and
conscientious efforts to avoid the disruption of her marital ties,
plighted with such high hopes in the springtime of her girlhood, but
her husband's infidelities had now become so open and flagrant that
the situation was no longer bearable. Divorce was at that time a far
more serious step than it is now, and, for the sake of her family, she
hesitated long before taking it, but there is no doubt that she was
deeply wounded and humiliated by this painful episode in her life,
and, in 1875, partly to remove herself as far as possible from
distressing associations, partly to give her daughter the advantage of
instruction in foreign schools of art, she took her three children and
set out for Europe. When she left California for this journey it is no
exaggeration to say that every bond of affection that held her to
Samuel Osbourne had been broken.

CHAPTER IV

FRANCE, AND THE MEETING AT GREZ.

When they arrived on the other side, the Osbournes went directly to
Antwerp, having decided to make a trial of that place first for their
art studies. They landed at night in that most picturesque old city
and took quarters at the Hotel du Bien-etre, a quaint little old
bourgeois inn where you walked in through the kitchen--full of copper
pots and pans. It was in the days before "improvements"--broad
avenues, street-cars, and the like--had robbed the old town of much of
its distinctive c