Anonymous - Frank and I

The last few days before the marriage slipped away rapidly, and uneventfully; the wedding day arrived, and then, according to my promise, I gave Frances away. She was exquisitely dressed, in the most perfect taste; and though she was thirty years old, she was still a very beautiful woman, and I felt a pang of regret at knowing that I should never again poke her, or even have the pleasure of feeling her plump bottom or her firm bubbies.

At the wedding breakfast there was a large party of guests, including a number of the bridegroom’s relatives; the usual speeches were made, and everything passed off well.

Frances was in good spirits; and just before she left the room to put on her travelling-dress, she drew me aside out of sight of the guests, and giving me a kiss, said: “Charley, I love my husband and I will be faithful to him; but I shall never forget how kind you have been to me, from the day you took me into your house, up to the present moment.”

I clasped a bracelet on her wrist, as a wedding present, and kissing her for the last time, bade her good bye; then she ran upstairs to her room.

In a short time she came down, dressed for her journey; and then the newly-married couple got into their carriage, and were driven riff, amid showers of rice, to Charing Cross station, en route for Italy, where they intended to spend their honeymoon.

And so, for the second and last time, my sweetheart passed out of my life.

Next day I went home to Oakhurst, and settled down to my old life as a country gentleman.

Five years have passed since the last lines were written, and I again take up my pen to put the finishing touches to the story.

Frances is now a buxom matron, thirty-five years old, with two little children. She and her husband are perfectly happy; they are very well-off, and they live in London half the year; and I am always a welcome guest at their house whenever I choose to go there. Gilbert and I are very good friends; as he has not the faintest suspicion that I ever was anything to Frances but her “guardian,” She has quite a daughterly affection for me, and whenever we meet we talk and laugh about the old days.

Miss Martin, after leaving Frances, got a good situation as governess in a family, where she remained until she heard of her husband’s death in South America. Then she married again. I have never seen her since.

Frances’ two step-children live with their father’s relations: but they often visit their stepmother, and I have frequently seen them. Robert is sixteen years old, and is studying for the army. Dora is nineteen years old, and has grown-as I knew she would-into a magnificent young woman, tall and shapely, and most “divinely fair.” She is engaged to be married.

My story is finished, and though I am fifty years of age, I am in good health, and I can still “look upon the wine when it is red,” and I can also still enjoy a pretty girl.

But often, in the long winter evenings, when I am sitting all alone in my big dining-room after dinner, I think of the “boy Frank” whom I had picked up on the road twenty years before, and who had eventually turned out to be a loving, faithful woman.