as all impatience to
hear her report.

But Genevieve had anticipated also. She arrived armed with a
commission from the Ohio cousin, the performance of which would brook
no delay. So I had a minute alone with her downtown. She had been
thoughtful enough to record a detailed statement of her investigations;
it lies before me now as I write; and I shall condense from it those
portions that are essential to advancing this chronicle.

In the early '50's Clara Cooper was the belle of the village of Merton.
Wooers were many, but favors were few and grudgingly bestowed; and in
time all the suitors withdrew, leaving the field clear to Alfred
Fluette and Felix Page.

The Coopers and the Fluettes represented the wealth and aristocracy of
the community, while Felix Page was a poor, struggling young man whose
only advantages and prospects for the future lay in his indomitable
pluck and a resolution that was ready to ride roughshod over all
opposition.

And Clara favored the poor young man. He went forth from Merton
resolved to wrest a fortune from the world and lay it at his
sweetheart's feet. She promised to wait for him until he returned with
the fulfilment of his ambitious aims.

Alas, though, for the fiery Felix: she was not of a very resolute
character, being easily influenced by her sterner parents, whose
patrician eyes looked askance upon the presumptuous lover's claims.
Besides, Felix was absent--supposedly engaged in his laudable
enterprise of wresting a fortune from the world--while Alfred,
handsome, polished of manner, patient and persistently attentive, was
ever at her elbow.

Then, too, there was Miss Clara's family, to the last one of them
espousing Alfred's cause. In the end the girl allowed herself to drift
with the current. Felix would have accomplished more to his purpose
had he remained at home and married Clara, and then gone after the
fortune. At any rate, after one or two letters from Felix, which
glowed with hope and boundless zeal, she ceased to hear from him.
Doubtless he had come to realize that the wresting operation demanded
all his powers; but his silence was easily made to appear of more
significance than it deserved. It was construed--for Miss Clara, not
by her--as indisputable evidence of forgetfulness. Within the year she
married Alfred Fluette.

Six years passed. Alfred Fluette had migrated with his bride to the
city. Then Felix Page returned triumphant to Merton. His trium