red of a gentleman and a friend. Then she was not
disagreeable, nor was her beauty of a type to suggest the charms of
her I had lost. None of the graces of the haughty patrician lady whose
lightest gesture was a command, would appear in this humble girl, to
mock and constrain me. No, I should have a fair wife and an obedient
one, but no vulgarized shadow of Evelyn, thank God, or of any of her
fashionably dressed friends.

"Advanced thus far towards the end, I went to see Luttra. I had not
beheld her since the morning we parted at the door of that little
cottage in Vermont, and her presence caused me a shock. This, the humble
waif with the appealing grateful eyes I had expected to encounter? this
tall and slender creature with an aureola of golden hair about a face
that it was an education to behold! I felt a half movement of anger as I
surveyed her. I had been cheated; I had planted a grape seed and a palm
tree had sprung up in its place. I was so taken aback, my salute lost
something of the benevolent condescension I had intended to infuse into
it. She seemed to feel my embarassment and a half smile fluttered to
her lips. That smile decided me. It was sweet but above all else it was
appealing.

"How I won that woman to marry me in ten days time I care not to
state. Not by holding up my wealth and position before her. Something
restrained me from that. I was resolved, and perhaps it was the only
point of light in my conduct at that time, not to buy this young girl. I
never spoke of my expectations, I never alluded to my present advantages
yet I won her.

"We were married, there, in Troy in the quietest and most unpretending
manner. Why the fact has never transpired I cannot say. I certainly took
no especial pains to conceal it at the time, though I acknowledge
that after our separation I did resort to such measures as I thought
necessary, to suppress what had become gall and wormwood to my pride.

"My first move after the ceremony was to bring her immediately to New
York and to this house. With perhaps a pardonable bitterness of spirit,
I had refrained from any notification of my intentions, and it was as
strangers might enter an unprepared dwelling, that we stepped across the
threshold of this house and passed immediately to my father's room.

"'I can give you no wedding and no honeymoon,' I had told her. 'My
father is dying and demands my care. From the altar to a death-bed may
be sad for you, but it is an inevit