nterest and pleasure to me. I never can enumerate all I owed
to him. My dull life was changed, and the house owed him gratitude.

We began to have the gas lighted in the parlor, and even Uncle Leonard
came in there sometimes and sat after dinner, before he went up into
that dreary library above. I think he rather enjoyed hearing us talk
gayly across his sombre board; he certainly became softer and more human
toward me after Richard came to be so constantly a guest. He gave me
more money to spend, (that was always the expression of his feelings,
his language, so to speak;) he made various inquiries and improvements
about the house. The dinners themselves were improved, for a horrible
monotony had crept into the soups and sauces of forty years; and Uncle
Leonard was no epicure; he seemed to have no more stomach than he had
heart; brain and pocket made the man.

I think unconsciously he was much influenced by Richard, whose business
talent had charmed him, and to whom he looked for much that he knew he
must soon lose. He was glad to make the house seem pleasant to him, and
he was much gratified by his frequent coming. And Richard was peculiarly
a man to like and to lean upon. Not in any way brilliant, and with no
literary tastes, he was well educated enough, and very well informed; a
thorough business man. I think he was ordinarily reserved, but our
intercourse had been so unconventional, that I did not think him so at
all. He was rather good-looking, tall and square-shouldered, with
light-brown hair and fine dark-blue eyes; he had a great many points of
advantage.

One day, long after he had become almost a member of the household, he
told me he wanted me to know his sister, and that she would come the
next day to see me, if I would like it. I did like it, and waited for
her with impatience. He had told me a great deal about her, and I was
full of curiosity to see her. She was a little older than Richard, and
the only sister; very pretty, and quite a person of consequence in
society. She had made an unfortunate marriage, though of that Richard
said very little to me; but with better luck than attends most
unfortunately-married, women, she was released by her husband's early
death, and was free to be happy again, with some pretty boys, a moderate
fortune, and two brothers to look after her investments, and do her
little errands for her. She considered herself fortunate; and was a
widow of rare discretion, in that she was