To G.C.R.
 
  Chapter I. A Triangular
       Alliance.

    'Edina,
           Scotia's Darling seat!

    All hail
           thy palaces and towers!'

    Edinburgh,
           April 189-.

    22
        Breadalbane Terrace.

    We have travelled together before,
           Salemina,
         Francesca,
           and I,
         and we
              know the very worst
            there is
                  to know about one another.

    After this point
        has been reached,
           it is
             as if a triangular marriage
                had taken place,
         and,
           with the honeymoon comfortably over,
         we slip along in
              thoroughly friendly fashion.

    I use
           no warmer word than'friendly'
          because,
               in the first place,
             the highest tides of feeling
                  do not
                      visit the coasts
                           of triangular alliances;
            and because,
               in the second place,
             'friendly' is a word capable
                   of putting
                 to the
                  blush many a more passionate
                       and endearing one.

    Every one
        knows of our experiences
               in England,
           for we
            wrote volumes of letters
                 concerning them,
         the which
            were widely
                  circulated among our friends
                       at the time,
           and read aloud
               under the evening lamps
                   in the
              several cities of our residence.

    Since then few striking changes
          have taken
         place in our history.

    Salemina returned to Boston
           for the winter,
         to find,
         to her amazement,
           that for forty odd years
             she had been
                   rather overestimating it.

    On arriving in New York,
           Francesca discovered
             that the young lawyer
                  whom for six months
             she had been advising
                  to marry somebody more worthy
                       than herself
                was at last about
                  to do it.

    This was
          somewhat in the nature
               of a shock,
           for Francesca
            had been in the habit,
         ever since she was seventeen,
           of giving
               her lovers similar advice,
         and up to this
              time no one of them
            has ever taken it.

    She therefore
        has had the
               not unnatural hope,
           I think,
         of organising at one time
              or another all these disappointed
                   and faithful swains
                 into a celibate brotherhood;
        and perhaps of driving
               by the interesting monastery
                   with her husband and
              calling his attention modestly
                   to the fact
             that these poor monks
                were filling their barren lives
                       with deeds of piety,
           trying to remember their Creator
               with such assiduity
             that they might,
         in time,
           forget Her.

    Her chagrin
        was all the keener
               at losing this
              last aspirant
                   to her hand in
         that she
            had almost persuaded herself
         that she
            was as fond
                   of him as
             she was likely
                  to be of anybody,
           and that on the whole
             she had better
                  marry him
                      and save
                           his life and reason.

    Fortunately she
        had not
              communicated this
                  gleam of hope by letter,
           feeling,
         I suppose,
           that she
            would like
                  to see
                       for herself the light
                           of joy
                       breaking over his pale cheek.

    The scene
        would have been
               rather pretty and touching,
           but meantime the Worm
            had turned
                   and despatched a letter
                 to the Majestic
                   at the quarantine station,
         telling her
             that he
                had found
                       a less reluctant bride
                     in the person
                        of her intimate friend Miss
                                 Rosa Van Brunt;
        and so Francesca's dream
               of duty
             and sacrifice
            was over.

    Salemina says
         she was somewhat
              constrained for a week
                   and a trifle cynical
                 for a fortnight,
           but that afterwards her spirits
              mounted on ever
                  ascending spirals
                       to impossible heights,
         where they have since remained.

    It appears
           from all this that
         although she
            was piqued at
                being taken at her word,
           her heart
            was not
                   in the least damaged.