Page:Early Reminiscences.djvu/251

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1851 197 " Monday, February 10th. Mama and Margaret walked with Mrs. Ellis and Miss Graham in the Allee Maritime, where they met Mr. Hadow, who, of course, joined them, and also, of course, stayed behind with the two girls, whilst the two married ladies trudged on before. As they walked along, Fanny Graham pulled out a locket with Mr. Hadow's hair, which he had given her, and said that she would keep it for ever. She also gave him something wrapped in paper, with the inscription * With Fanny's best love.' Inside the paper was a locket with her hair, which he had asked for at the last party, when he won a Philippine of her. All this Mr. Hadow told me when he came home, for he tells me all his secrets. Ever since he has had that locket he has been almost mad with joy. He jumps about the room like a romping child, and laughs and screeches like an idiot. At our lessons he scribbles F. G. over every bit of paper he can lay hold of, and intertwines those initials with his own W. H." There is a good deal more about the love affairs of Mr. Hadow in my brother's diary, but nothing more of the Frazers till May 16th, when they called to say farewell. Men are deceivers ever ! Nothing came of these love passages. W7hen Hadow returned to England, and was with us at Tavistock, within six months he was engaged to Miss Mary Cornish, sister of the late Bishop of St. Germans, whom he married. As to the Frazers, they either evaporated into thin air or changed their names, and so vanished from our knowledge, for we never saw or heard more of them; and I should not have remembered that such a person as Constance Frazer had ever come across my path, had I not read the preceding passages in my brother's diary. Although Mr. Hadow in the above account plays rather a frivolous part, he was actually a very worthy man, and I owe to him a debt of gratitude for the instruction he gave me. It was his first grand passion, and many a man when so overcome makes himself ridiculous. As Touchstone says, " True lovers run into strange capers." There was no English chaplain at Bayonne, and my father read Morning Prayer, and in the evening a sermon. My tutor furnished me with Wordsworth's Theophilus Anglicanus to study, and study it I did. The book supplied me with what I particularly