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In truth, Mrs. Walrond was ill at ease about this marriage, why she did not know. Something in her heart seemed to tell her that her dear daughter’s happiness would not be of long continuance. Bearing in mind his family history, she feared for Anthony’s health; indeed, she feared a hundred things that she was quite unable to define. However, at the little breakfast which followed she seemed quite to recover her spirits and laughed as merrily as anyone at the speech which Lady Thompson insisted upon making, in which she described Barbara as “her darling, beautiful and most accomplished niece, who indeed was almost her daughter.”

CHAPTER VI

PARTED

Hard indeed would it be to find a happier marriage than that of Anthony and Barbara. They adored each other. Never a shadow came between them. Almost might it be said that their thoughts were one thought and their hearts one heart. It is common to hear of twin souls, but how often are they to be met with in the actual experience of life? Here, however, they really might be found, or so it would seem. Had they been one ancient entity divided long ago by the working of Fate and now brought together once more through the power of an overmastering attraction, their union could not have been more complete. To the eye of the observer, and indeed to their own eyes, it showed neither seam nor flaw. They were one and indivisible.

About such happiness as this there is something alarming, something ominous. Mrs. Walrond felt it from the first, and they, the two persons concerned, felt it also.

“Our joy frightens me,” said Anthony to Barbara one day. “I feel like that Persian monarch who threw his most treasured ring into the sea because he was too fortunate; you remember the sea refused the offering, for the royal cook found it in the mouth of a fish.”

“Then, dear, he was doubly fortunate, for he made his sacrifice and kept his ring.”

Anthony, seeing that Barbara had never heard the story and its ending, did not tell it to her, but she read something of what was passing in his mind, as very often she had the power to do.

“Dearest,” she said earnestly, “I know what you think. You think that such happiness as ours will not be allowed to last for long, that something evil will overtake us. Well, it may be so, but if it is, at least we shall have had the happiness, which having been, will remain for ever, a part of you, a part of me; a temple of our love not built with hands in which we shall offer thanks eternally, here and–beyond,” and she nodded towards the glory of the sunset sky, then turned and kissed him.

As it chanced, that cruel devouring sea which rages at the feet of all mankind was destined ere long to take the offering that was most precious to these two. Only this was flung to its waters, not by their hands, but by that of Fate, nor did it return to them again.

After their marriage Anthony and Barbara hired a charming little Georgian house at Chelsea near to the river. The drawback to the dwelling was that it stood quite close to a place of public entertainment called “The Gardens,” very well known in those days as the nightly haunt of persons who were not always as respectable as they might have been. During their sojourn in London they never entered these Gardens, but often in the summer evenings they passed them when out for the walks which they took together, since Anthony spent most of his days at the Temple, studying law in the chambers of a leading barrister. Thus their somewhat fantastic gateway became impressed upon Barbara’s mind, as did the character of the people who frequented them. As, however, their proximity reduced the rent of their own and neighbouring houses by about one-half, personally they were grateful to these Gardens, since the noise of the bands and the dancing did not trouble them much, and those who danced could always be avoided.