Page 372 - The snake's pass

360 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 before-
hand. 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