"Do people love more than once, papa?"
"I don't know, dear," he said, smiling. "I loved here in England very
desperately, and when the lady I worshipped threw me over for another, I
swore I would never look a woman in the face again with the idea of
wedding; and in utter disgust left England, and all I knew, to roam for
a time in the Malay Archipelago; and from thence I went to South
America, following out my natural history tasks. Then I found out I had
been a fool."
"I do not understand you, papa."
"I found, my darling, that I had wasted the strength of a young man's
first love upon a miserable handsome coquette."
"How did you find that out, papa?"
"By meeting your dear mother, who was everything a true woman should be;
and instead of my life proving to be a miserable state of exile, it was
all that joy could give till the day of the great pain."