red her into a reception room and
departed with her card.

It was now that the visitor's nose took an upward tendency as she
critically examined her surroundings. The furnishings were abominable, a
mixture of distressingly new articles with those evidently procured
from dealers in "antiquities." Money had been lavished here, but good
taste was absent. To understand this--for Miss Von Taer gauged the
condition truly--it is necessary to know something of Mrs. Martha
Merrick.

This lady, the relict of John Merrick's only brother, was endowed with a
mediocre mind and a towering ambition. When left a widow with an only
daughter she had schemed and contrived in endless ways to maintain an
appearance of competency on a meager income. Finally she divided her
capital, derived from her husband's life insurance, into three equal
parts, which she determined to squander in three years in an attempt to
hoodwink the world with the belief that she was wealthy. Before the
three years were ended her daughter Louise would be twenty, and by that
time she must have secured a rich _parti_ and been safely married. In
return for this "sacrifice" the girl was to see that her mother was made
comfortable thereafter.

This worldly and foolish design was confided to Louise when she was only
seventeen, and her unformed mind easily absorbed her mother's silly
ambition. It was a pity, for Louise Merrick possessed a nature sweet
and lovable, as well as instinctively refined--a nature derived from her
dead father and with little true sympathy with Mrs. Merrick's
unscrupulous schemes. But at that age a girl is easily influenced, so it
is little wonder that under such tuition Louise became calculating, sly
and deceitful, to a most deplorable degree.

Such acquired traits bade fair in the end to defeat Mrs. Merrick's
carefully planned _coup_, for the daughter had a premature love affair
with a youth outside the pale of eligibility. Louise ignored the fact
that he had been disinherited by his father, and in her reckless
infatuation would have sacrificed her mother without thought or remorse.
The dreadful finale had only been averted by the advent of Uncle John
Merrick, who had changed the life plans of the widow and her heedless
daughter and promptly saved the situation.

John Merrick did not like his sister-in-law, but he was charmed by his
lovely niece and took her at once to his affectionate old heart. He saw
the faults of Louise clearly, but also