H.G. Murray

For Love's Sake

In The Australian Journal, 1st June 1892.

Nearly four months passed before I saw her. I was walking in the Regent's Park one afternoon in December. There was half-frozen snow upon the ground, and more in the sky waiting to fall. I was thinking about her, and I felt dull and miserable. I sat down upon a bench and lit my pipe, and tried to drive her from my mind by thinking of a story I was writing at the time. But I could think of nothing but her. The night was closing in, and a park-keeper came and told me that the gates would soon be closed and I must go. As I rose to obey, a woman's figure fluttered by me. The light was dim under the trees, and she passed quickly at some distance from where I stood. But I knew her. It was she, the girl I had lost

The narrator had first seen her, chaperoned by her aunt, at an evening reception given by a famous authoress. He had been smitten immediately, but later the girl had disappeared. Meeting her now in the park, he learns that her aunt 'had lost the income on which they had lived, by a piece of heartless rascality,' and they were now reduced to poverty. A further twist of fate results in our hero inheriting a fortune, enabling him to provide for both ladies.