tenderness that swept him into paradise. So he stood dreaming, while
tearless, silent Miss Elisabetha sat before her broken hopes. At last
Doro, coming back to reality, murmured, "Aunt, you will like her when
you know her better, and she will take good care of you."

But the aunt only shuddered.

"Theodore, Theodore!" she cried, "will you break my heart? Shall the son
of Petrus Oesterand marry so?"

"I do not know what you mean by 'so,' aunt. All men marry, and why not
I? I never knew my father; but, if he were here, I feel sure he would
see Catalina with my eyes. Certainly, in all my life, I have never seen
a face so fair, or eyes so lustrous."

"Child, you have seen nothing--nothing. But I intended, Heaven knows I
intended--"

"It makes no difference now, aunt; do not distress yourself about it."

"Theodore, I have loved you long--your youth has not been an unhappy
one; will you, for my sake, go for this one year?" she pleaded, with
quivering lips.

The young man shook his head with a half smile.

"Dear aunt," he said gently, "pray say no more. I do not care to see the
world; I am satisfied here. As to Catalina, I love her. Is not that
enough?" He bent and kissed her cold forehead, and then went away to his
happy dreams; and, if he thought of her at all as he lingered in the
soft twilight that comes before sleep, it was only to wonder over her
distress--a wonder soon indolently comforted by the belief that she
would be calm and reasonable in the morning. But, across the hall, a
gray old woman sat, her money beside her, and the hands that had earned
it idle in her lap. God keep us from such a vigil!

* * * * *

And did she leave him? No; not even when the "him" became "them."

The careless young wife, knowing nothing save how to love, queened it
right royally over the old house, and the little brown brothers and
sisters ran riot through every room. The piano was soon broken by the
ignorant hands that sounded its chords at random; but only Doro played
on it now, and nothing pleased him so well as to improvise melodies from
the plaintive Minorcan songs the little wife sang in her velvet voice.
Years passed; the money was all spent, and the house full--a careless,
idle, ignorant, happy brood, asking for nothing, planning not at all,
working not at all, but loving each other in their own way, contented to
sit in the sunshine, and laugh, and eat, and sing, all the day long. The
t