ew with Mr. Ellwell, a sudden opening of the Ellwell family
arms, and he was one of them--not much to his relish. Ruby Ellwell
brought out her engagement to Bradley, the young stock broker her
father had chummed with. The Four Corners renewed its worldly life in
a garden-party, at which both engagements were announced. Thornton had
to stand in line with his new brother-in-law, and for all this
disagreeable business, the sole consolation was the happiness the
woman he loved found in it. For her it was a rehabilitation of the
family, the first dawn of those better times she had looked for all
these years.

He remembered for all his lifetime how his father had met her; how he
had walked across the lawn, old, and gray, and aloof, and had taken
both her hands. He had smiled at her tenderly, as if she were a little
girl, much as he had smiled years before at Jarvis's mother. Then he
had kissed her on both cheeks, and had stood patting her hands in a
gentle caress. Later he had slipped away in the same quiet abstracted
manner. For the rest of the day Jarvis Thornton had been a little sad,
as well as bored, without knowing exactly why.

They had planned a simple wedding for September; they would walk to
the village church, the old white box of a meeting-house where the
first Roper Ellwell had led his congregation. Martinson, Thornton's
youthful hero at the Camberton Theological School, would meet them in
his episcopal robes on the little green in front of the church, and
then the party, not more than a dozen, could walk together into the
bare old building, and in the solemn quiet of the country noon
complete the marriage. A quiet dinner, and then away from the Four
Corners.

But it could not be so. The handsome Ruby wished to have a "function,"
some of the conventional excitements of this entertainment. The two
sisters must be married together; a special train must come from
Boston; a grand reunion would be held of all the old family friends
who had shaken their heads over the Ellwell misfortunes. So the two
quieter souls yielded, and the marriage left a bad taste in the young
bridegroom's cup of joy.

Almost at once they had gone abroad to Berlin, where Thornton proposed
to work for an indefinite time. It seemed to him that he should
accomplish more than one object, by carrying on his work in Europe; he
could insensibly divide himself and his wife from the Ellwell
connection. All went sweetly for his first months; he had