Life is full of pre-Raphaelitism, and so is fiction, if indeed it
resembles life--such as we know it, or such as it might be. The art of
verisimilitude is found alone in detail.
Let me go back, then, for a brief summary of some of the principal
events and personages of Monfort Hall and Beauseincourt, the earlier
portions of this retrospect. I will begin with the La Vignes.
George Gaston, in one of the brief pauses of his stormy political
career, wooed and married Margaret La Vigne, the year before her mother
espoused in second nuptials her early lover (the brother of that saintly
minister who came to her rescue in the first days of her widowhood), and
in this marriage she has been happy and prosperous.
They continue to reside under the same roof, and Bellevue awaits its
master. It will be empty, I think, if I understand George Gaston's
character, so long as Major Favraud is a wanderer on the face of the
Continent of Europe, and held, for his especial benefit and return, in
readiness.
Vernon and his sweet wife Marion spent the first season of their happy
married life under my lintel-tree, and are now our nearest neighbors in
our new land of sojourn. A slender iron fence divides our grounds from
theirs. A golden cord of affection binds our lives together. Our
interests, too, are the same.
Vernon is leagued with my husband in the great engineering projects
which have enriched them both--the capital to enlist in which sphere
of enterprise was furnished by the sale to a company of our
"gold-gashed" lands in Georgia--revealed to my knowledge, as it may be
remembered, by the inadvertence of Gregory.
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