bride said:

"Rhoda, my dear, there is a bonnet up-stairs I expect to wear this
winter, and I want to try it on you, whom I think it will particularly
become."

Rhoda's quiet eyes flashed as she saw the new article and heard Vesta
praise it, upon her head. The old bonnet had received a cruel blow, in
spite of Mrs. Somers.

Tilghman, too, accused himself that he felt a little relieved when he
escorted Rhoda back to Meshach's in another bonnet, and Vesta followed,
with her great shaggy dog, Turk; she not unconscious--though serene and
thoughtfully polite to all she knew--of people peering at her in wonder
and excitement from every door and window of the town. The news was
working in every household, from the servants in the kitchens to the
aged people helped to their food with bib and spoon, that the famed
daughter of Daniel Custis was the prize of the junk dealer and usurer
in "old town" by the bridge, who had enslaved a wife at last.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE DUSKY LEVELS.

The new son-in-law, left alone with Judge Custis, asked to be propped up
in bed, and nothing was visible that would support his pillow but the
aged leather hat-box that Custis, with a wry face, brought to do duty.

"My illness is unfortunate," he gasped; "not only to me, but to the new
ties I have formed; to the mutual interest my wife and I have in making
up your losses on Nassawongo furnace, which we are all the poorer by to
that amount; and to a suitor whose cause I have taken up. I have bought
an interest in a great lawsuit."

"Then the day of reckoning of your enemies has come, Milburn."

"Not yet," said the sick man, with a proud flash of his eyes, "unless I
am no merchant and you are no lawyer, and the first I will not concede."

"Nor I the second," exclaimed the Judge, with some pride and temper.

"You were once a good lawyer, if visionary," resumed the money-lender,
with scant ceremony. "Had we been able to respect each other we might
have been confederated in things valuable to ourselves and to our time
and place. But that is past, and you do not possess my confidence as my
legal agent, my attorney. I wish you to get another advocate for me."

"I am willing to be useful, even without your compliments," the Judge
said, remembering his Christian resolution. "We will not quarrel, if I
can serve you."

"I do not wish to hurt your feelings, but my strength is not great
enough for unmeaning flattery. This marriage was so dear to m