ame of perhaps the best old family in that vicinity,
Edgham itself had been named for it, and while he partook of that
degeneracy which comes to the descendants of the large old families,
while it is as inevitable that they should run out, so to speak, as
flowers which have flourished too many years in a garden, whose soil
they have exhausted, he had not lost the habit of rectitude of his
ancestors. Virtue was a hereditary trait of the Edghams.

Harry Edgham looked at Ida Slome with as innocent admiration as
another woman might have done. Then he looked again at his daughter's
little flower-like head, and a feeling of love made his heart warm.
Maria could sing herself, but she was afraid. Once in a while she
droned out a sweet, husky note, then her delicate cheeks flushed
crimson as if all the people had heard her, when they had not heard
at all, and she turned her head, and gazed out of the open window at
the plumed darkness. She thought again with annoyance how she would
have to go with her father, and Wollaston Lee would not dare accost
her, even if he were so disposed; then she took a genuine pleasure in
the window space of sweet night and the singing. Her passions were
yet so young that they did not disturb her long if interrupted. She
was also always conscious of the prettiness of her appearance, and
she loved herself for it with that love which brings previsions of
unknown joys of the future. Her charming little face, in her
realization of it, was as the untried sword of the young warrior
which is to bring him all the glory of earth for which his soul longs.

After the meeting was closed, and Harry Edgham, with his little
daughter lagging behind him with covert eyes upon Wollaston Lee, went
out of the vestry, a number inquired for his wife. "Oh, she is very
comfortable," he replied, with his cheerful optimism which solaced
him in all vicissitudes, except the single one of actually witnessing
the sorrow and distress of those who belonged to him.

"I heard," said one man, who was noted in the place for his
outspokenness, which would have been brutal had it not been for his
naivete--"I heard she wasn't going to get out again."

"Nonsense," replied Harry Edgham.

"Then she is?"

"Of course she is. She would have come to meeting to-night if it had
not been so damp."

"Well, I'm glad to hear it," said the man, with a curious
congratulation which gave the impression of disappointment.

Little Maria Edgham and