ring some shawls."

Cecil slips down. Floyd draws his wife nearer. He would like to hold
the slight little thing, but his mother is opposite, and he must not
make Violet seem a baby.

"I have put an end to that!" exclaims Mrs. Grandon, vindictively, going
back to Gertrude. "That is Laura's piano, and it shall not be drummed
on by school-girls. What Floyd could see in that silly little
red-haired thing to bring her to a place like this, when he could have
had a lady----"

"After all, if he is satisfied," begins Gertrude, deprecatingly.

"He wanted her fortune! He doesn't care a sixpence for her. It was to
get the business in his hands, and now we can all tramp as soon as we
please."

"Mother, you _are_ unjust."

"And you are a poor, spiritless fool, who can never see anything beyond
the page of a novel!" is the stinging retort.

She goes to her own room, and the morning's mail carries the news to
Eugene and Laura.

Floyd has letters to write this evening, and when Cecil's bedtime
comes, Violet goes up with her. They have a pretty romp that quite
scandalizes Jane, who is not at all sure how much respect she owes this
new mistress.

"O you sweet little darling!" Violet cries for the twentieth time. "You
are the one thing I can have for mine."

"I am papa's first," says Cecil, with great dignity. "He loves me best
of anything in the wide world,--he has told me so, oh, a hundred times!
And I love him best, and then you. Oh, what makes you cry so often,
because your papa is dead?"

No one but poor old Denise will ever love her "best of all." She has
had her day of being first. Even in heaven papa has found the one he so
long lost and is happy. She can never be first with him again. He
hardly misses her, Violet; he has had her only at such long intervals,
such brief whiles.

In the silence she cries herself to sleep the first night in her new
home.

CHAPTER XI.

Men, like bullets, go farthest when they are smoothest.--JEAN PAUL.

Floyd Grandon begins the next morning by treating his wife as if she
were a princess born. His fine breeding stands in stead of husbandly
love. Briggs has orders to take her and Miss Cecil out in the carriage
every day. Jane is to wait on her. Even Cecil is not allowed to tease,
and instructed to call her mamma. He escorts her in to the table, and
at a glance the servant pays her outward deference at least.

"Violet," he says, after breakfast, "will you drive over with me