TRATIONS

"_Are you so bent upon winning her, Graydon?_"

_"There, now, be rational" cried the young girl_

_Her lips were parted, her pose, grace itself_

"_Promise me you will take a long rest_"

"_So you imagine I shall soon be making love to another girl?_"

CHAPTER I

A CRESCENT OF A GIRL

When Madge Alden was seventeen years of age an event occurred which
promised to be the misfortune of her life. At first she was almost
overwhelmed and knew not what to do. She was but a young and
inexperienced girl, and for a year or more had been regarded as an
invalid.

Madge Alden was an orphan. Four years prior to the opening of our
story she had lost her mother, her surviving parent, and since had
resided with her elder sister Mary, who was several years her
senior, and had married Henry Muir, a merchant of New York City. This
gentleman had cordially united with his wife in offering Madge a home,
and his manner toward the young girl, as far as his absorbed and busy
life permitted, had been almost paternal. He was a quiet, reticent
man, who had apparently concentrated every faculty of soul and body on
the problem of commercial success. Trained to business from boyhood,
he had allowed it to become his life, and he took it very seriously.
It was to him an absorbing game--his vocation, and not a means to some
ulterior end. He had already accumulated enough to maintain his family
in affluence, but he no more thought of retiring from trade than would
a veteran whist-player wish to throw up a handful of winning cards.
The events of the world, the fluctuations in prices, over which he had
no control, brought to his endeavor the elements of chance, and it was
his mission to pit against these uncertainties untiring industry and
such skill and foresight as he possessed.

His domestic life was favorable to his ruling passion. Mary Alden, at
the time of her marriage, was a quiet girl, whose early life had been
shadowed by sorrow. She had seen her father pass away in his prime,
and her mother become in consequence a sad and failing woman.
The young girl rallied from these early years of depression into
cheerfulness, and thoroughly enjoyed what some might regard as a
monotonous life; but she never developed any taste for the diversions
of society. Thus it may be surmised that Mr. Muir encountered no
distractions after business hours. He ever found a good dinner
awaiting him, and his wife held herself in readi