his daughter, and he lived in her a new, sweet and satisfying life. The
mother was often jealous of her husband's demonstrative tenderness for
Edith. A yearning instinct of womanhood, long repressed by worldliness
and a mean social ambition, made her crave at times the love she had
cast away, and then her cup of life was very bitter. But fear of Mr.
Dinneford's influence over Edith was stronger than any jealousy of his
love. She had high views for her daughter. In her own marriage she had
set aside all considerations but those of social rank. She had made it
a stepping-stone to a higher place in society than the one to which she
was born. Still, above them stood many millionaire families, living
in palace-homes, and through her daughter she meant to rise into one
of them. It mattered not for the personal quality of the scion of the
house; he might be as coarse and common as his father before him, or
weak, mean, selfish, and debased by sensual indulgence. This was of
little account. To lift Edith to the higher social level was the all in
all of Mrs. Dinneford's ambition.

But Mr. Dinneford taught Edith a nobler life-lesson than this, gave her
better views of wedlock, pictured for her loving heart the bliss of a
true marriage, sighing often as he did so, but unconsciously, at the
lost fruition of his own sweet hopes. He was careful to do this only
when alone with Edith, guarding his speech when Mrs. Dinneford was
present. He had faith in true principles, and with these he sought to
guard her life. He knew that she would be pushed forward into society,
and knew but too well that one so pure and lovely in mind as well as
person would become a centre of attraction, and that he, standing on the
outside as it were, would have no power to save her from the saddest of
all fates if she were passive and her mother resolute. Her safety must
lie in herself.

Edith was brought out early. Mrs. Dinneford could not wait. At seventeen
she was thrust into society, set up for sale to the highest bidder, her
condition nearer that of a Circassian than a Christian maiden, with her
mother as slave-dealer.

So it was and so, it is. You may see the thing every day. But it did not
come out according to Mrs. Dinneford's programme. There was a highest
bidder; but when he came for his slave, she was not to be found.

Well, the story is trite and brief--the old sad story. Among her suitors
was a young man named Granger, and to him Edith gave her