42 APRIL 



" Delightful ! " replied Jim. 



" What do you think of Seraphina, Jim ? " 



" Very nice, I'm sure." 



" Jim, what do you think of Seraphina ?" 



"Well, as a woman I should certainly consider 

 her a failure," he answered. 



Some years have passed, and there are others of 

 us besides Jim who consider that Seraphina as a 

 woman is a failure. 



Sometimes I think that it is not study alone 

 which has given Jim his far-away look and quiet 

 eyes, and ways too sedate for three-and-thirty years. 

 Nor is it poverty, though he had known wealth and 

 ease before there came the necessity for work. But 

 this is a thing he will not talk about, and I shall 

 never discover whether any soreness still troubles 

 him about that old time. 



It seemed a good time to us while it lasted. We 

 had hardly known our parents ; and a benevolent 

 grandfather brought us all up, and many happy 

 years we spent together in the grey old manor- 

 house on the other side of the village. Jim was 

 formally regarded as the heir to the property, and 

 life promised him its best gifts of peace and plenty, 

 when the old man died, and we found that he had 

 left nearly everything to an alien a distant cousin 

 whom we had hardly heard of and never seen. 

 For me and for the others it mattered little ; our 

 married lives were full and happy enough, but for 

 the boy Jim ah, that is a different story. He 

 began to work, for he was too proud to accept what 

 we would gladly have given, and for five long years 

 he kept want just a little in front of him, yet 



