happened it
had, and she was pledged to leave the vine-wreathed cottage which
Harry had built for her, and go with one of whom she knew
comparatively little.

Six months before our story opens she had spent a few days with him
at the house of a mutual friend in an adjoining State, and since
that time they had written to each other regularly, the
correspondence resulting at last in an engagement, which he had now
come to fulfill. He had never visited her before in her own home,
consequently she was wholly unacquainted with his disposition or
peculiarities. He was intelligent and refined, commanding in
appearance, and agreeable in manner whenever he chose to be, and
when he wrote to her of his home, which he said would be a second
Paradise were she its mistress, when he spoke of the little
curly-headed girl who so much needed a mother's care, and when, more than
all, he hinted that his was no beggar's fortune, she yielded; for
Matilda Remington did not dislike the luxuries which money alone can
purchase. Her own fortune was small, and as there was now no hand
save her own to provide, she often found it necessary to economize
more than she wished to do. But Dr. Kennedy was rich, and if she
married him she would escape a multitude of annoyances, so she made
herself believe that she loved him; and when she heard, as she more
than once did hear, rumors of a sad, white-faced woman to whom the
grave was a welcome rest, she said the story was false, and, shaking
her pretty head, refused to believe that there was aught in the
doctor of evil.

"To be sure, he was not at all like Harry--she could never find one
who was--but he was so tall, so dignified, so grand, so particular,
that it seemed almost like stooping, for one in his position to
think of her, and she liked him all the better for his condescension."

Thus she ever reasoned, and when Janet said that he was coming, and
she, too, heard his step upon the piazza, the bright blushes broke
over her youthful face, and casting a hurried glance at the mirror,
she hastened out to meet him.

"Matty, my dear!" he said, and his thin lips touched her glowing
cheek, but in his cold gray eye there shone no love,--no feeling,--no
heart.

He was too supremely selfish to esteem another higher than himself,
and though it flattered him to know that the young creature was so
glad to meet him, it awoke no answering chord, and he merely thought
that with her to minister to him he should