e's diffidence, and he knew
that their family life would soon banish it. He welcomed this pale
slip of a girl to their home circle because it gave him pleasure to
pet and rally such a wraith into something like genuine existence. He
also hoped that eventually she would become a source of amusement to
him. Nor was he disappointed. Madge's mind was not colorless, if her
face was, and she gradually began to respond to his mirthfulness, and
to take an interest, intelligent for a child, in what occupied his
thoughts. Kindness creates an atmosphere in which the most sensitive
and diffident natures develop and reveal themselves, and Madge Alden,
who might easily have been chilled into a reticent and dispirited
girl, eventually manifested an unusual versatility of fancy and
thought, acquiring also no slight power of expression.

Thus Graydon obtained his reward. His brother was a grave and silent
man, to whom few themes could be broached except those of business
and the events and politics of the day in their relation to trade. His
sister-in-law was absorbed in household and family cares, but Madge's
great black eyes responded with quick appreciation to all that he
said, and their merry nonsense often provoked a smile upon even the
face of Mr. Muir. The good-natured sympathy of the young man therefore
passed gradually into a genuine fraternal regard, and he rarely came
home of an evening without bringing flowers, bonbons, or some other
evidence that he had remembered her. Unconsciously to herself, he
became more to her than her sister, who was indulgent in the extreme,
but not very demonstrative. Her shyness disappeared, and his caresses
seemed as natural as those of an elder brother, in which light she
regarded him.

Thus time passed on, and the girl rapidly approached the stature of
womanhood. Apparently she grew too fast for her slight reserve of
physical strength. She nominally attended a fashionable school, but
was often absent from ill health, and for this reason her sister
permitted her to follow her own moods. Indolence and inanition
accounted largely for her lack of strength. Exercise brought
weariness, and she would not take it. Nothing pleased her more than to
curl up on a lounge with a book; and her sister, seeing that she was
reading most of the time, felt that she was getting an education. To
the busy lady a book was a book, a kind of general fertilizer of
the mind, and as Madge usually took cold when she went o