it was how it softened the blow of my father s death i felt as if i had got into a haven of rest and peace from which i never be again as long as i lived and still the old native woman s prophecy stayed in my mind persistently i do not mean to imply that it always stayed in my mind but it came back from time to time with more or less painful � there is no in your life yon keep nothing long at least not in the early part of your life at such times i had to remind myself of that other prophecy of hers � your lord s heart will be yours always it was to that my father s were all sent home not the furniture of our at but all his and my personal my own things had been packed np by my father s orders immediately that my marriage was a finally settled matter and had been actually sent off by him the week previous to hia death but captain had gathered together everything that he believed i should most value the pictures a few choice books � as choice as anybody ever has in india that is to say � a few skins and and various personal odds and ends that my father had regularly used all other things were sold as is the custom at such times and the money for these together with the little money that my father had had to leave was handed over to me in accordance with his last wiu strangely enough made and signed on the very day of my wedding he had not had very much to leave � something over a thousand you had better put it with your money i said to my husband when i received the l z i c the of hy life for the from the lawyer who had managed my father s not at all he said but i don t want any separate money i would rather you would take care of it i don t understand money the best thing that we can do said my husband is to put it in a bank by itself and to keep it for for instance at the end of a couple of years we shall have to turn out of this place and furnish for ourselves and as my little all is well and safely invested in england it would he a pity to sell out for furnishing purposes besides it is always as well to have a shot in the for absolute emergency use one cannot t� ll in this climate what a single day may bring forth by far the best thing to do would be to put it into a bank in your own name we agreed to do that and so our life went on and i never gave my little bo as another thought we were really very gay at this time the rd was a go ahead regiment and one and all seemed determined to enjoy every scrap of gaiety that could be squeezed out of a life in not even my mourning kept me in for more than a few weeks i was a bride and as a bride i must be and i was very young and in spite of my great grief i did not find it practicable to myself from the life that was going on around ma at first when i began to go about i felt that i was wicked and then i reminded myself that after all it was hard to visit my sorrow upon my husband and i felt that if my father could look down and see me from where he was he would understand l z i a note in a i was not going i had in any sense foi him or ceased to regret him but wholly and solely ont of a desire to do my to the utmost to the who had been so good and considerate and tender with me and with every day that went over my head i to love my better and he on his side grew more and more devoted to me how different it would all have been if i had been left any relations whom i had known as relations with only my modest little and a wretched little to live npon a and a stray who would live in other people s houses with only two courses open to her either to marry for a home or to develop into that wretched of womanhood an indian spin i used sometimes to look at my husband with a kind of wonder i have often caught myself asking was i really edward was i really gallant young soldier s wife or was it all a dream and should i wake up some day to find myself in bed at or up in the which i had shared with mrs at in a certain sense there was a grain of in my life as if it was something to which i was not and never could get quite accustomed but i was very happy i had only one cause for dissatisfaction there was only one leaf in our bed of roses only one note in the harmony of our fa ie affection it was that while most of s people wrote to him sending good wishes and presents his mother who had been everything in the world to him stood aloof of course onr marriage had been very hurriedly pushed on and perhaps to her with her english notions � for as be explained to me english people as a rule d the of my have longer than ours was � there may have seemed something almost in the haste with which onr marriage had been arranged once or twice i asked whether he had heard from his mother and 