Bressant

"He never saw his friend after that day. The next morning came an answer

from the young lady--a cruel and cold rejection of him--repudiation of

his love, and a doubt of his honor. It bewildered him, and, for a time,

crushed him. Long afterward, he found out that she had never seen the

letter he wrote, but a very different one, of his friend's concoction.

"Very soon afterward, they were gone--all three! and, before a year was

passed, he heard that his friend and the daughter were married, and the

father died of a fever contracted in Spain.

"He tried to go on as usual for several months, but it was no use. At

last, he left his practice, and all his connections, and wandered over

the United States--through towns and wildernesses. He rode across the

plains on a mustang; clambered through the gorges of the Rocky

Mountains; saw the tide come in through the Golden Gate at San

Francisco. He pushed north as far as Canada, and thence came down the

Mississippi to New Orleans. From there he crossed to the Pacific coast

again, and lived to find himself a second time in San Francisco. He

didn't stay there long, but struck overland, slanting southward, and, in

four or five months, appeared at Charleston, South Carolina. So he

worked up the Atlantic coast to New York. By the time he got there, he

was older and wiser, and strengthened, body and mind, by a rough

experience. He resolved to travel no more; but, as yet, it was not in

his power to feel happy.

"Much had happened in his absence. His friend, after living three or

four years with his wife in Europe, was separated from her--not,

however, by a regular divorce--and she had disappeared, and had not

since been heard of. It was reported that she was dead. She had left

with her husband a son, two or three years old, at that time a sickly

little fellow, scarcely expected to live. It was supposed that the

mother had discovered that it was her money, and not herself, that her

husband cared for, and, perhaps, too, may have imagined him to be still

thinking of his first love, who, indeed, was said to have in some way

fomented the quarrel between them, though how, or to what end, was never

known. She, by-the-way, after an absence of some years from New York,

suddenly reappeared there, and married a wealthy old Knickerbocker, who

died not long afterward, and left her his property. She became eminent

in society, and was intimate with all the most distinguished people. Her

former lover returned from Europe, with his little son, and, I believe,

settled somewhere in the neighborhood of New York. They met, and, I

understand, came to be on very friendly terms with one another, but the

conditions of their lives would have prevented the possibility of

marriage, even had they desired it.