ot a happy one; that
the beautiful mistress was subject to occasional periods of such profound
depression--such intense gloom--as filled her husband's heart with alarm,
and shadowed even her physician's mind with forebodings that these
symptoms indicated the approach of that worst and most hopeless form of
mental disease, melancholia.

Her devoted husband often proposed to take her, during the summer, to
Saratoga or Newport; or, during the winter, to Washington or to Baltimore;
he even urged her at all times to let him take her to Europe. But she
firmly objected to leaving Mondreer, insisting that she was happier there
than she could be anywhere else.

And, in truth, as years passed on, and children came, her melancholy
seemed gradually to wear off, until in time it wholly disappeared.

Three children were born to them--all girls.

Odalite, the eldest, was thought to resemble both parents, having the
Grecian profile and the fair complexion of her mother, and the black eyes
and black hair of her father.

Wynnette, the second girl, was a perfect brunette, with a saucy snub nose,
brown complexion, and black eyes and black hair.

Elfrida, or Elva, was all her mother--a faultless blonde--with fair
complexion, blue eyes, and golden-brown hair.

Failing male heirs, Odalite, the eldest daughter of the house, would, not
from any law of primogeniture, but merely by the custom of the country, be
the heiress of the manor, though Wynnette and Elva would be very well
endowed.

Very early in his married life, while his eldest daughter was still a babe
in arms, and his younger ones were not yet in existence, Abel Force had
been intrusted with the guardianship of a five-year-old boy--young
Leonidas Force, the orphan son of his second cousin of the same name.

When several years had passed, and all hope of a male heir to send on the
name with his old ancestral manor had faded away, it became the dearest
wish of Abel Force's heart to unite his eldest daughter and his orphan
cousin in marriage, so that Mondreer should not pass into another family.

With this object in view, he encouraged the affection that soon began to
show itself between the boy and girl who were being brought up and
educated in his home together.

He even sought to lead them to believe that they were destined for each
other.

It is true that such a plan very seldom succeeds, perhaps not more than
once in a hundred times, since the boy and girl so trained w