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THE SNAKE'S PASS.

English school at Brighton, one justly celebrated amongst Englishwomen.

These last six months were very, very long to me; for as the time drew near when I might claim my darling the suspense grew very great, and I began to have harrowing fears lest her love might not have survived the long separation and the altered circumstances.

I heard regularly from Joyce. He had gone to live with his son Eugene, who was getting along well, and was already beginning to make a name for himself as an engineer. By his advice his father had taken a sub-section of the great Ship Canal, then in progress of construction, and with the son's knowledge and his own shrewdness and energy was beginning to realize what to him was a fortune. So that the purchase-money of Shleenanaher, which formed his capital, was used to a good purpose.

At last the long period of waiting came to an end. A month before Norah's school was finished, Joyce went to Brighton to see her, having come to visit me beforehand. His purpose and mine was to arrange all about the wedding, which we wanted to be exactly as she wished. She asked her father to let it be as quiet as possible, with absolutely no fuss—no publicity, and in some quiet place where no one knew us.

"Tell Arthur," she said, "that I should like it to be somewhere near the sea, and where we can get easily on the Continent."

I fixed on Hythe, which I had been in the habit of visiting occasionally, as the place where we were to be