of releasing right of reentry for condition broken
which has been settled by arbitration for a considerable period. If I am
not mistaken the Register of Deeds will get something more than a new
coat out of this business, for the Lady very justly attributes her change
of fortunes to his sagacity and his activity in following up the hint he
had come across by mere accident.

So my supernumerary fellow-boarder, whom I would have dispensed with as a
cumberer of the table, has proved a ministering angel to one of the
personages whom I most cared for.

One would have thought that the most scrupulous person need not have
hesitated in asserting an unquestioned legal and equitable claim simply
because it had lain a certain number of years in abeyance. But before the
Lady could make up her mind to accept her good fortune she had been kept
awake many nights in doubt and inward debate whether she should avail
herself of her rights. If it had been private property, so that another
person must be made poor that she should become rich, she would have
lived and died in want rather than claim her own. I do not think any of
us would like to turn out the possessor of a fine estate enjoyed for two
or three generations on the faith of unquestioned ownership by making use
of some old forgotten instrument, which accident had thrown in our way.

But it was all nonsense to indulge in any sentiment in a case like this,
where it was not only a right, but a duty which she owed herself and
others in relation with her, to accept what Providence, as it appeared,
had thrust upon her, and when no suffering would be occasioned to
anybody. Common sense told her not to refuse it. So did several of her
rich friends, who remembered about this time that they had not called
upon her for a good while, and among them Mrs. Midas Goldenrod.

Never had that lady's carriage stood before the door of our
boarding-house so long, never had it stopped so often, as since the
revelation which had come from the Registry of Deeds. Mrs. Midas
Goldenrod was not a bad woman, but she loved and hated in too exclusive
and fastidious a way to allow us to consider her as representing the
highest ideal of womanhood. She hated narrow ill-ventilated courts,
where there was nothing to see if one looked out of the window but old
men in dressing-gowns and old women in caps; she hated little dark rooms
with air-tight stoves in them; she hated rusty bombazine gowns and last
year'