half done her dinner, and of being kept waiting still longer while he deliberately partook of his soup, fish, flesh: Mr. Wilford was deliberate to the verge of despair!

On this present occasion he had apparently forgotten all about his coffee. He sat drumming with his spoon on the edge of his saucer, pensively gazing at a sponge-cake on his plate. Eleanor, who was entirely devoid of reverence, and was besides extremely satirical, parodied, as she looked over at him resentfully

"What is the darling thinking about?
Many wonderful things, no doubt."

Finally she could stand it no longer. "I wonder how many hours in the course of the year I waste over the dinner-table !" Mr. Wilford looked up. He could be satirical too. "Was that thunder? Ah, you look out of sorts, Eleanor. Let me tell you that only a very pretty woman can permit herself the luxury of frowning. You should not trifle with yourself."

Then he drank off his coffee and rose. Eleanor's hazel eyes snapped fire and the corners of her mouth went down. But in the long run she was exceedingly afraid of her father.

"I have noticed," Mr. Wilford pursued, "that you have appeared to be oppressed of late by your housekeeping cares; and as I have a prejudice in favor of having smiling faces about me, I will endeavor to relieve you of your arduous duties." And Mr. Wilford withdrew with a courteous gesture of leave-taking. Mr. Wilford was nothing if not courteous.

Eleanor rang the bell violently for the servant, whom she had previously dismissed according to routine. Then she swept upstairs like a tempest, and flung herself into a low arm-chair, which by a dexterous movement she rolled in front of her mirror. "Not handsome enough to afford the luxury of frowning, indeed!" Here she stopped short as she caught sight of her own reflection. Her father was right; she was not looking at her best.

Eleanor Wilford was very fond of herself, and very proud of herself, and took great pains with herself. She was always well dressed, and she was always a very stylish, showy person; but she needed smiles and good humor to tone down the somewhat rigid lines of her mouth, to soften the effect of her long aquiline nose, to brighten the eyes which were too small to be beautiful. Her glossy dark hair was banded back with pale blue velvet, and there were pale blue velvet bows on her pretty flowing white dress; but the angry color and the frowning brows might have been symbolised by a darker shade of blue. Eleanor gazed at herself critically, and proceeded to smooth out the frowns; then she began to walk slowly up and down the room with her arms folded. She regretted that she had allowed her wrath to bubble over just now; but then Papa was so thoroughly irritating. Still it was to her advantage for her to cultivate patience and forbearance. It would be dreadful if what every one had prophesied ever since she could remember, really should come to pass, and Papa should marry again. She reasoned herself into quite an amiable mood, and then she went down-stairs, tied on her garden-hat and walked out into the garden to cut some fresh roses.

She found one or two which were so remarkably beautiful that she decided they would do good service as a peace-offering. So she sailed this young lady's motions were all of the sailing, sweeping, marching, as opposed to the gliding, floating, drifting order - down the broad flagged hall, into the library at the end of it, her vase of crystal in her handsome hand, containing its fragrant Enfant Carmel and Pio Nono.

"Papa," she began; but the sedate bald-head was not at its post at the desk. Miss Eleanor tossed her head resentfully that her father should have taken the liberty of going out just as she appeared upon the scene with her rose of peace.

However, she deposited her flowers on the table, and with head erect and cerulean colors flying, sailed out again. On her way down the hall a triangular note addressed to her name caught her eyedropped into the card-receiver. She always hated that innocent card-receiver afterwards, with its gilt legs and its two étages of painted Sêvres.

The note was from her father. It ran :

"My dear Eleanor:- As you will no doubt most value a contrition that is expressed in deeds, my best apology to you for my recent transgressions at my own table will be, the intimation to you that I will not keep you waiting at dinner-time, to-morrow, nor the next day, nor the day after that; in fact, I may be absent a week or more. I take the evening train for Baltimore. C'est toujours l'imprévu, which axiom I leave you to ponder in my absence. Yours, R. WILFORD."

She read the note twice, thrice, and she was thoroughly miserable. She had a sudden, quick presentiment of what was coming.

The moment after, she reasoned with this presentiment; an hour after, she endeavored to play it away in the tumult of one of Wagner's noisy overtures. She kept up her spirits; she went about the house singing. But all the same, she had had her sudden, quick, fatal presentiment.

Which came true. A week later her father wrote to her that he was engaged to be married. This had been the dread and terror of poor Eleanor's life. This to avoid, she had curbed her tongue and checked her speech and restrained her actions; had put herself under such restraint, indeed, that sometimes when she had gone upstairs to her own room, she had set her teeth and clinched her fist as a measure of relief. And this was her reward: a stranger was to be put over her. Dear old Myrtle Bank was to have a new mistress. This girl, like others of her sex, was inconsistently weak. It hurt her that stranger-hands were coming to tend her roses, that a stranger would be called upon to decide what trees should be cut, what hedges trimmed. She loved all this inanimate Nature better than she loved any living human being. Oh! how cruel, how cruel her father had been! Finally, a passion of tears came to her relief.

Eleanor had no conception, on the other hand, that her father had been obliged to use no less self-control than she herself. He had her own volcanic nature, however, and it had been by sheer force of will

that he had kept himself from coming to words with his overbearing daughter. That he had so kept himself, Eleanor attributed to her own tact and judgment. But he was tired of this. He considered that he had given Eleanor's housekeeping a fair trial. If she had made him happy and comfortable, he would have nipped in the bud his own private wishes and feelings. But she had not; he had given her a fair trial and she had failed. Life was short; he would make himself as happy as circumstances permitted from this time forth, without regard to Eleanor.

He announced his matrimonial intentions, however, without entering into all these disagreeable particulars. He told his daughter that his engagement would be a short one, and that Miss Stillé had consented to be married at the end of two months. At this Eleanor curled her lip. A willing bride, she annoted scornfully. She for her part made up her mind that she would not remain at Myrtle Bank during the following two months. She wrote to her father to this effect. She would pay her cousins, the Willings, a visit while her father was making his preparations to receive his bride.

Mr. Wilford waited until his return to reply to this letter. Then he agreed to his daughter's leaving home for a while. Only he requested her to be at Myrtle Bank to receive Mrs. Wilford. He believed in making a fair start; and with not unexampled selfishness, he preferred that his wife should receive the keys of office and a suggestion here and there as to how her affairs had hitherto been conducted, from Eleanor, who, to do her justice, had administered with zeal and efficiency, if not with benignity.

Eleanor betook herself to Virginia and made herself exceedingly useful and agreeable at the Willings'. They all condoled with her, and were especially affectionate in view of the impending catastrophe at home. She was sufficiently fortified and refreshed to return to Myrtle Bank in a state of good self-control, at all events; and when the carriage swept around the circle and drew up, and her father handed his wife out and led her into the house, Eleanor stood at the threshold of the drawing-room to receive her, with a set smile that at least simulated a cordial welcome.

She saw a little person so utterly unconscious and unaffected and unpretending as to be totally at her ease. When Eleanor bent over her and kissed her, uttering rapidly, "Welcome to Myrtle Bank, Mrs. Wilford," as she had drilled herself in anticipation, Mrs. Wilford pressed her hand and kissed her in return, and said very easily and naturally, "Did you think we were never coming? The train was delayed."

"I always expect that; trains invariably are delayed when I am travelling. How do you do, Papa? Mrs. Wilford, would you like to go upstairs? shall I show you the way?

The simple little bride followed her imposing daughter up the broad stairs, the jardinières in the stairway niches heaped with late roses in the bride's honor. Mrs. Wilford stopped at each niche on her way up and sniffed and admired. And Eleanor stood by loftily, saying neither yea nor nay. She had made up her mind to perform her last duties as hostess en règle; but she had also made up her

mind to throw as little as possible of personal feeling into the performance.

She led the way into Mrs. Wilford's pretty rooms, a crimson room opening into a rose-colored one, like a veritable Enfant Carmel. Her lip curled so naturally that it was curling irresistibly now. "Is there anything I can do for you, Mrs. Wilford ?"

66 Thank you no indeed - only please call me Nannie." "Is that your name? - certainly if you prefer it, and if Papa approves." And she marched down-stairs with an indifference and coolness that were a little overacted.

"Your wife requests me to call her Nannie, Papa-shall I?" she said as she passed him in the hall. "I should say so, of course. Have you graciously permitted her to take the same liberty with you ? "

"I am in the position of a conquered province; I accept terms, but I do not dictate them," Eleanor said. She was under the impression that she was exercising great forbearance, and she pitied herself exceedingly, presently, when she felt the hot tears coming to her eyes as she waited for her father and his wife to reappear. we will no doubt all agree with her that it was hard.

And

She was dashing off a brilliant, noisy overture, which we have known her to make use of before as an escape-valve, when Mrs. Wilford came smiling in, and stood beside her listening.

"Do you play?" Miss Wilford inquired politely.

"You would hardly call it playing-never anything but dancemusic. I used to play almost every evening for the children to dance. Aunt Emma showed them the figures.'

It was incidentally, as in this instance, Eleanor became acquainted with the circumstances of Mrs. Wilford's previous life. She had been left an orphan, and had been adopted by an uncle into his already large family of boys and girls. Mrs. Wilford had a way of always alluding to her past, to her uncle, aunt, cousins, to Mary this one, Sophy the other, as though they were all historical characters well known to fame. She was constitutionally confidential and communicative. Eleanor secretly curled her lip at this trait, after her prevailing habit. She regarded it as a token of a weak nature.

Perhaps little Mrs. Wilford was weak, but she was one of the most sunshiny, even-tempered little women in the world. She stood in great awe of Eleanor from the very first, and made quite a point of propitiating her and keeping in her good graces. And besides standing in awe of her she admired her extremely. She was excessively like her father, and prepossessed the little wife in her step-daughter's favor from the very outset. Mr. Wilford had been

shall I say politic or generous? He had left his daughter to speak for herself. He had determined that Nannie should learn the best and worst of Eleanor from the fountain-head.

Meantime Eleanor had made up her mind that she would marry. She might have married before this had she chosen, but she was ambitious, and she had waited for the better fish in the sea than those which had hitherto come to her net. She put all softer considerations out of the question. To tell the truth, she was not much given to

softer considerations. Marriage to her meant bettering her condition. Hitherto this would have been no very easy matter; as mistress of Myrtle Bank and her father's heiress she was exceptionally well-off, but things had changed now. She would be less exacting. She longed to have a home of her own, where she could have undisputed sway. She was only living a life of endurance at present.

Fortunately for her determination she had an admirer- a young man who considered that she was a very fine woman to begin with, and who had, besides, matrimonial views somewhat similar to her own. He also was ambitious of bettering his condition. Six months ago he had quite made up his mind that he could not do better than to persuade Miss Wilford to have him. Even now that her father had married again he looked upon the alliance with great favor. He had been informed on good authority that Miss Wilford had inherited a very comfortable little fortune from her own mother, which in fact was the case. So one afternoon Mr. Walter Dodd rode over to Myrtle Bank from the neighboring town, where he was engaged in practising law, with the intention of pushing his suit should fortune favor him. It was October, and the world was steeped in gorgeous coloring, bathed in clear cool air. Mr. Dodd was human; he was not insensible to the influences of Nature, although possibly he was not aware that such was the case. His spirits rose, and when Miss Wilford arose from the rustic chair on the gallery where she had been sitting reading a novel, and came forward to receive him, he told himself that he would be the most fortunate man in the world if he succeeded in winning this handsome, gracious, superior girl.

So when, after hanging upon the skirts of the subject for an hour or two, and endeavoring to put the question in an unhackneyed form, Mr. Dodd finally descended to the merest commonplace and said, “It would make me very happy if you would marry me, Miss Eleanor," Miss Eleanor hesitated, but replied with an embarrassed little laugh: "Then I suppose I shall have to make you happy." And so the matter was settled.

Afterwards, when he had cantered off again, Miss Eleanor went upstairs to her room, and threw her hair-pins and ring-receivers and other toilette knick-knacks around, in a state of dissatisfaction for which she would have found it hard to account, as she smoothed her ruffled plumes before dinner. It was all so stupid and commonplace. She, Eleanor Wilford, who in point of fact had always considered herself head and shoulders above her neighbors, figuratively as well as literally, was going to settle down in a dull, humdrum way just like any one else. Mrs. Dodd! Good gracious, what a name! She regretted for full ten minutes that she had signified her assent to Mr. Walter Dodd, until she recalled the present condition of domestic affairs. She must marry; her father had driven her to it; he and that tiresome little wife of his. Then the dinner-bell rang, and she composed her features, especially her lips into a set smile, and trailed her impressive draperies down-stairs.

As luck would have it, her father, accustomed to speak slightingly of her admirers, and to have her follow suit, in fact remarked, as he sipped his coffee: "I am at a loss whether mcst to admire Mr. Dodd's