a look of inexpressible deference to his wife.

"Madame," said he "when I urged you with such warmth to join your
fate to mine and honor my house by presiding over it, I thought I was
inviting you to share the advantages of wealth as well as the love of
a lonely man's heart. This paper undeceives me. Luttra, the
daughter-in-law of Abner Blake, not Holman, his son, is the one who
by the inheritance of his millions has the right to command in this
presence."

With a cry she took from him the will whose purport was thus briefly
made known. "O, how could he, how could he?" exclaimed she, running her
eye down the sheet, and then crushing it spasmodically to her breast.
"Did he not realize that he could do me no greater wrong?" Then in one
yielding up of her whole womanhood to the mighty burst of passion that
had been flooding the defenses of her heart for so long, she exclaimed
in a voice the mingled rapture and determination of which rings in my
ears even now, "And is it a thing like this with its suggestions of
mercenary interest that shall bridge the gulf that separates you and me?
Shall the giving or the gaining of a fortune make necessary the unital
of lives over which holier influences have beamed and loftier hopes
shone? No, no; by the smile with which your dying father took me to his
breast, love alone, with the hope and confidence it gives, shall be the
bond to draw us together and make of the two separate planes on which we
stand, a common ground where we can meet and be happy."

And with one supreme gesture she tore into pieces the will which she
held, and sank all aglow with woman's divinest joy into the arms held
out to receive her.

* * * * *

I was present at the wedding-reception given them by the Countess De
Mirac in her elegant apartments at the Windsor. I never saw a happier
bride, nor a husband in whose eyes burned a deeper contentment. To all
questions as to who this extraordinary woman could be, where she was
found, and in what place and at what time she was married, the Countess
had apt replies whose art of hushing curiosity without absolutely
satisfying it, was one of the tokens she yet preserved, of her short
sway as grand lady, in the gayest and most hollow city of the world.

As I prepared to leave a scene perhaps the most gratifying in many
respects that I had ever witnessed, I felt a slight touch on my arm. It
came from Mrs. Blake who with her husband had crossed