rneath was a mass of miscellaneous papers,
among them his will, dated the day after Billy left Selwoode, in which
Frederick R. Woods bequeathed his millions unconditionally to Margaret
Hugonin when she should come of age.

Her twenty-first birthday had fallen in the preceding month. So
Margaret was one of the richest women in America; and you may depend
upon it, that if many men had loved her before, they worshipped her
now--or, at least, said they did, and, after all, their protestations
were the only means she had of judging. She might have been a
countess--and it must be owned that the old Colonel, who had an honest
Anglo-Saxon reverence for a title, saw this chance lost wistfully--and
she might have married any number of grammarless gentlemen, personally
unknown to her, whose fervent proposals almost every mail brought in;
and besides these, there were many others, more orthodox in their
wooing, some of whom were genuinely in love with Margaret Hugonin, and
some--I grieve to admit it--who were genuinely in love with her money;
and she would have none of them.

She refused them all with the utmost civility, as I happen to know.
How I learned it is no affair of yours.

For Miss Hugonin had remarkably keen eyes, which she used to
advantage. In the world about her they discovered very little that she
could admire. She was none the happier for her wealth; the piled-up
millions overshadowed her personality; and it was not long before she
knew that most people regarded her simply as the heiress of the Woods
fortune--an unavoidable encumbrance attached to the property, which
divers thrifty-minded gentlemen were willing to put up with. To put up
with!--at the thought, her pride rose in a hot blush, and, it must be
confessed, she sought consolation in the looking-glass.

She was an humble-minded young woman, as the sex goes, and she saw no
great reason there why a man should go mad over Margaret Hugonin. This
decision, I grant you, was preposterous, for there were any number of
reasons. Her final conclusion, however, was for the future to regard
all men as fortune-hunters and to do her hair differently.

She carried out both resolutions. When a gentleman grew pressing in
his attentions, she more than suspected his motives; and when she
eventually declined him it was done with perfect, courtesy, but the
glow of her eyes was at such times accentuated to a marked degree.

Meanwhile, the Eagle brooded undisturbed at Selwood