Beyond The Rocks | Page 2

who had accumulated a large fortune in Australia, quite by accident, in
a comparatively few years.
Josiah Brown was only fifty-two, though his head was bald and his
figure far from slight. He had a liver, a chest, and a temper, and he
adored Theodora.
Captain Fitzgerald had felt a few qualms when he had wished his little
daughter good-bye on the platform and had seen the blue stars
swimming with tears. The two daughters left to him were so plain, and
he hated plain people about him; but, on the other hand, women must

marry, and what chance had he, poor, unlucky devil, of establishing his
Theodora better in life?
Josiah Brown was a good fellow, and he, Dominic Fitzgerald, had for
the first time for many years a comfortable balance at his bankers, and
could run up to Paris himself in a few days, and who knows, the
American widow, fabulously rich--Jane Anastasia McBride--might take
him seriously!
Captain Dominic Fitzgerald was irresistible, and had that fortunate
knack of looking like a gentleman in the oldest clothes. If married for
the third time--but this time prosperously, to a fabulously rich
American--his well-born relations would once more welcome him with
open arms, he felt sure, and visions of the best pheasant shoots at old
Beechleigh, and partridge drives at Rothering Castle floated before his
eyes, quite obscuring the fading smoke of the Paris train.
"A pretty tough, dull affair marriage," he said to himself, reminded
once more of Theodora by treading on a white rose in the station.
"Hope to Heavens Sarah prepared her for it a bit." Then he got into a
fiacre and drove to the hotel, where he and the two remaining Misses
Fitzgerald were living in the style of their forefathers.
Josiah Brown's valet, Mr. Toplington, who knew the world, had
engaged rooms for the happy couple at the Grand Hotel. "We'll go to
the Ritz on our way back," he decided, "but at first, in case there's
scenes and tears, it's better to be a number than a name." Mademoiselle
Henriette, the freshly engaged French maid, quite agreed with him. The
Grand, she said, was "_plus convenable pour une lune de Miel_--"
Lune de Miel!

II
It was a year later before Theodora saw her family again. A very severe
attack of bronchitis, complicated by internal catarrh, prostrated Josiah
Brown in the first days of their marriage, and had turned her into a

superintendent nurse for the next three months; by that time a winter at
Hyères was recommended by the best physicians, and off they started.
Hyères, with a semi-invalid, a hospital nurse, and quantities of
medicine bottles and draught-protectors, is not the ideal place one reads
of in guide-books. Theodora grew to hate the sky and the blue
Mediterranean. She used to sit on her balcony at Costebelle and gaze at
the olive-trees, and the deep-green velvet patch of firs beyond, towards
the sea, and wonder at life.
She longed to go to the islands--anywhere beyond--and one day she
read _Jean d'Agrève_; and after that she wondered what Love was. It
took a mighty hold upon her imagination. It seemed to her it must mean
Life.
It was the beginning of May before Josiah Brown thought of leaving
for Paris. England would be their destination, but the doctors assured
him a month of Paris would break the change of climate with more
safety than if they crossed the Channel at once.
Costebelle was a fairyland of roses as they drove to the station, and
peace had descended upon Theodora. She had fallen into her place, a
place occupied by many wives before her with irritable,
hypochondriacal husbands.
She had often been to Paris in her maiden days; she knew it from the
point of view of a cheap boarding-house and snatched meals. But the
unchecked gayety of the air and the _façon_ had not been tarnished by
that. She had played in the Tuilleries Gardens and watched Ponchinello
at the Rond Point, and later been taken once or twice to dine at a cheap
café in the Bois by papa. And once she had gone to Robinson on a
coach with him and some aristocratic acquaintances of his, and eaten
luncheon up the tree, and that was a day of the gods and to be
remembered.
But now they were going to an expensive, well-managed private hotel
in the Avenue du Bois, suitable to invalids, and it poured with rain as
they drove from the Gare de Lyon.

[Illustration: "She Wondered What Love Was."]
All this time something in Theodora was developing. Her beautiful face
had an air of dignity. The set of her little Greek head would have driven
a sculptor wild--and Josiah Brown was very generous in money matters,
and she had always