They were all alone now. Death had entered their little
circle and robbed them of their dear one. The loving husband and kind
father, who had toiled for them, working day after day, and often far
into the night, to surround his cherished darlings with the elegancies
to which they had been accustomed, had been suddenly taken away, and
"their house was left unto them desolate." They had not even time to
mourn, for, after they had buried their dead out of their sight, the man
of business came and told them in brief, unsympathetic tones that they
must leave the home that had so long sheltered them, for the wealth that
had purchased and made it beautiful, was their's no longer. They were
penniless. It was a cruel blow. Mrs. Graystone sank helplessly under
it, and the delicately reared daughter had all the burden thrown upon
her young shoulders. And nobly did she bear it. Clemence Graystone, with
her bright, radiant face, had seemed to her fond father like a sunbeam
gilding that stately home, and warming into living beauty what else
would have been only cold magnificence. To her mother, deprived of every
other earthly comfort, she became a ministering angel. She forgot her
own trials: she did not mourn that she had lost the privileges of
society to which their former wealth entitled them: and her beautiful
lips curled in contempt, as one by one, those who had once professed the
warmest friendship, passed her with a cool nod or haughty stare.
Clemence had learned now how to value these summer friends, who
scattered at the first breath of adversity, and she tried bravely to
keep back the tears that _would_ come at the sight of her loved home in
the possession of strangers. She had something else to do now, must be
something else beside a "dreamer of vain dreams," and must work to
procure food for them both.

Yes, it had come to that. In America, where fortunes are made or lost in
a day, the millionaire may have his wealth suddenly swept from him, and
one of humble position as suddenly attain to affluence. An unlooked for
turn in the tide of affairs, a seeming caprice of the fickle goddess
Fortune, who saw fit to frown where she had always smiled, and Grosvenor
Graystone was a ruined man. The shock was too much for him, and he died
of grief and despair. It was nothing new, there are hundreds of such
cases every day. People commented, some pityingly, and others
exultingly, as we have seen. "Poor things!" was echoed dolefully, and