d, "for
nothing pleases me more than the sound of the hammer and saw, and
when you are gone I shall solace myself with fixing the entire
house. I must have excitement, or die as the others did."

"Maude--Mrs. Kennedy, do you know what time it is?" came from the
foot of the stairs, and Mrs. Kennedy answered, "It is one o'clock, I
believe."

"Then why are you sitting up so late, and why is that lamp left
burning in the parlor, with four tubes going off at once? It's a
maxim of mine--"

"Spare your maxims, do. I'm coming directly," and kissing the blind
girl affectionately, Mrs. Kennedy went down to her liege lord, whom
she found extinguishing the light, and gently shaking the lamp to
see how much fluid had been uselessly wasted.

He might have made some conjugal remark, but the expression of her
face forbade anything like reproof, and he soon found use for his
powers of speech in the invectives he heaped upon the long rocker of
the chair over which he stumbled as he groped his way back to the
bedroom, where his wife rather enjoyed, than otherwise, the
lamentations which he made over his "bruised shin." The story she
had been telling had awakened many bitter memories in Maude
Glendower's bosom, and for hours she turned uneasily from side to
side, trying in vain to sleep. Maude Remington, too, was wakeful,
thinking over the strange tale she had heard, and marveling that her
life should be so closely interwoven with that of the woman whom she
called her mother.

"I love her all the more," she said; "I shall pity her so, staying
here alone, when I am gone."

Then her thoughts turned upon the future, when she would be the wife
of James De Vere, and while wondering if she should really ever see
again, she fell asleep just as the morning was dimly breaking in the
east.

CHAPTER XIX.

A SECOND BRIDAL.

After the night of which we have written, the tie of affection
between Mrs. Kennedy and the blind girl was stronger than before,
and when the former said to her husband, "Maude must have an outfit
worthy of a rich man's stepdaughter," he knew by the tone of her
voice that remonstrance was useless, and answered meekly, "I will do
what is right, but don't be too extravagant, for Nellie's clothes
almost ruined me, and I had to pay for that piano yesterday. Will
fifty dollars do?"

"Fifty dollars!" repeated the lady. "Are you crazy?" Then, touched
perhaps by the submissive expression of his face, she added, "As