ed she was when William asked
her to marry him.

Fearing that they might be missed, they at last returned to the
parlor, where they found Ella seated at the piano, and playing a very
spirited polka. Henry, who boasted that he "could wind her around his
little finger," had succeeded in coaxing her into good humor, but not
at all desiring her company for the rest of the evening, he asked her
to play, as the easiest way to be rid of her. She played unusually
well, but when, at the close of the piece, she looked around for
commendation, from the one for whose ear alone she had played, she saw
him across the room, so wholly engrossed with her sister that he
probably did not even know when the sound of the piano ceased.

Poor Ella; it was with the saddest heartache she had ever known that
she returned from a party which had promised her so much pleasure, and
which had given her so much pain. Rose, too, was bitterly
disappointed. One by one her old admirers had left her for the society
of the "pauper," as she secretly styled Mary, and more than once
during the evening had she heard the "beauty" and "grace" of her rival
extolled by those for whose opinion she cared the most; and when, at
one o'clock in the morning, she threw herself exhausted upon the sofa,
she declared "'twas the last party she'd ever attend."

Alas, for thee, Rosa, that declaration proved too true!

CHAPTER XXVI.

MAKING UP HIS MIND.

For more than an hour there had been unbroken silence in the dingy old
law office of Mr. Worthington, where Henry Lincoln and William Bender
still remained, the one as a practising lawyer and junior partner of
the firm, and the other as a student still, for he had not yet dared
to offer himself for examination. Study was something which Henry
particularly disliked; and as his mother had trained him with the
idea, that labor for him was wholly unnecessary, he had never bestowed
a thought on the future, or made an exertion of any kind.

Now, however, a different phase of affairs was appearing. His father's
fortune was threatened with ruin; and as, on a morning several weeks
subsequent to Mrs. Russell's party, he sat in the office with his
heels upon the window sill, and his arms folded over his head, he
debated the all-important question, whether it were better to marry
Ella Campbell, for the money which would save him from poverty, or to
rouse himself to action for the sake of Mary Howard, whom he really
fancied