and fundamentally, and the utter redemption of myself; I don't know--all
I can tell is that it is something I have ever failed to find.

XI

But before I finish this chapter and book altogether and go on with
the great adventure of my uncle's career. I may perhaps tell what else
remains to tell of Marion and Effie, and then for a time set my private
life behind me.

For a time Marion and I corresponded with some regularity, writing
friendly but rather uninforming letters about small business things. The
clumsy process of divorce completed itself.

She left the house at Ealing and went into the country with her aunt and
parents, taking a small farm near Lewes in Sussex. She put up glass, she
put in heat for her father, happy man! and spoke of figs and peaches.
The thing seemed to promise well throughout a spring and summer, but the
Sussex winter after London was too much for the Ramboats. They got very
muddy and dull; Mr. Ramboat killed a cow by improper feeding, and that
disheartened them all. A twelvemonth saw the enterprise in difficulties.
I had to help her out of this, and then they returned to London and she
went into partnership with Smithie at Streatham, and ran a business that
was intimated on the firm's stationery as "Robes." The parents and aunt
were stowed away in a cottage somewhere. After that the letters became
infrequent. But in one I remember a postscript that had a little stab of
our old intimacy: "Poor old Miggles is dead."

Nearly eight years slipped by. I grew up. I grew in experience, in
capacity, until I was fully a man, but with many new interests, living