“Do you know, Dexie, dear,” he added presently, “something in that letter tells me that Hugh explained everything to Nina before he married her, and she could have refused him if she objected to the conditions.  Hugh’s money would overbalance many difficulties, and I have no doubt that Mrs. Gordon urged her daughter to accept him, with a full knowledge of his reasons for wishing to marry her.  I feel sure that Nina is willing and anxious to please Hugh, and he may yet find much happiness in the society of your double.  Few men would care to do such a thing, I admit, but if he finds any solace in his disappointment in surrounding himself with things that are dear to his memory and in making his wife a second Dexie, it is well.”

POSTSCRIPT.

Having happily married my heroine and disposed of her lovers, it occurs to me that I have reached the place where story-writers usually make a big flourish, write “Finis,” and then lay down the pen.

But the story of a person’s life does not end with marriage, as some would have us think, for marriage generally brings out one’s best qualities or develops the worst, and is sure to make or mar the life of every woman; consequently, this story is not yet finished.  Yet why should I trouble myself to write out the remainder of it until I have discovered if the reading public are interested in Dexie’s life so far as it has been already told?  It may be that no one cares to follow her fortunes any further, or feels the least desire to know what the future has in store for her, to say nothing of the friends who have been associated with her; and as I have no wish to bore you, dear reader, gentle or otherwise, it rests with you to say if their married lives shall be laid bare or not.

I am aware that the marriage of my heroine lacked the eclat which usually attends events of that kind—­in story books—­but I fancy the average reader is well acquainted with all the details of an elaborate wedding, and must be surfeited with the various accounts of them by this time.  However, if that is the style of wedding you prefer, I can give the names of several volumes which contain everything you can possibly desire in the way of description of gorgeous wedding costumes and all the rest of the paraphernalia that goes along with them, and you can read any account that suits you better, then take up my story further along.  See?

Those that take objection to Dexie’s home-life—­particularly to that immediately preceding her marriage—­are reminded that such lives do exist.  When death visits a family, and removes the restraining head, the petty faults of the remaining inmates are apt to grow apace, unless the Angel of Death has touched their hearts with divine grace.  Lacking this, the development of character has a downward tendency.  It does not make pleasant reading, but I have not told an impossible tale.  But who knows “how the other half lives?”