sappointment for her! Of course
Sylvie will marry Jack Darcy,--Pluto and Persephone again."

Then he softly whistled a stave of opera-music, and sauntered about
leisurely. He had no fancy for facing his mother that night.

As for Sylvie, she knew her face was very white when she entered the
door; but she bustled about with womanly evasion, and began to ask if
her aunt had been lonesome, if any one had called, and declared she was
tired from walking home, and her head ached a little, which was true;
and presently the two women barred their doors, and went to bed.

Was she glad to have it over? Was she sorry she had left no loop-hole
for future hope? Strange to say, she could not tell.

"But I could never live, like a pauper, on some other person's money!"
she thought decisively. "And he did not care. It was for his mother's
sake chiefly."

Again there was a breach between the Montagues and the Capulets, this
time crossed by no lovers' hands. Mrs. Lawrence was highly indignant,
Miss Barry vexed and sore disappointed. They went the even tenor of
their way, however, while the poor self-made invalid at Hope Terrace
grew more querulous and exacting. Fred took a week at Saratoga to
restore his wounded vanity, and then settled himself at a hotel in New
York, wondering if he had not better read a little law to pass away the
winter. Mrs. Minor was a queen of fashion, and she was glad to have the
attendance of her handsome brother. Irene and Mrs. Eastman flitted about
like gay butterflies, with trains of admirers. The faint mutterings in
the financial world made little difference to them. It was their
province to spend, to enjoy; and what the strata beneath them did or
suffered or hoped, was of no more account than the far-off ocean-froth
beating up on the hard white sand,--picturesque in a drama or a story.

CHAPTER VII.

IT was a dull, gray day, the first of December. Autumn had set in early
this year. There had been a week of cold rain that had quite destroyed
the magnificent foliage, one of Yerbury's greatest charms; and it became
a sodden mass, trodden under foot by pedestrians. The ground was baked
by sharp frosts at night, making the unpaved streets a mass of ruts
early and late, and quagmires in the middle of the day.

Yerbury had changed much from the pretty, clean, thriving country-town,
to something that aped a grand city; unfinished streets, small farms
laid waste, rows of pretentious houses or florid c