rs. Eldridge
died after a very brief illness; and returning to her southern home,
Leo found herself the object of social homage.

Thoroughly well-bred, accomplished, graceful and pretty, she commanded
universal admiration; yet her manner was marked by a quiet, grave
dignity, and a peculiar reticence, at variance with the prevailing type
of young ladyhood, now alas! too dominant; whose premature emancipation
from home rule, and old-fashioned canons of decorum renders "American
girlhood" synonymous with flippant pertness. Moulded by two women who
were imbued with the spirit of Richter's admonition: "Girls like the
priestesses of old, should be educated only in sacred places, and never
hear, much less see, what is rude, immoral or violent"; the pate tendre
of Leo's character showed unmistakably the potter's marks.

She shrewdly surmised that the knowledge of her unusual wealth
contributed to swell the number of her suitors, and she was twenty-four
years old when Lennox Dunbar, for whom she had long secretly cherished
a partiality, succeeded in placing his ring on her fair, slender hand.
In character they differed widely, and the deep and tender love that
filled her heart, found only a faint echo in his cold and more selfish
nature, which had carefully calculated all the advantages derivable
from this alliance.

He cordially admired and esteemed his brown-eyed fair-haired fiancee,
considered her the personification of feminine refinement and delicacy;
and congratulated himself warmly on his great good fortune in winning
her affection; but tender emotions found little scope for exercise in
his intensely practical, busy life, which was devoted to the attainment
of eminence in his profession; and the merely dynamic apparatus which
did duty as his heart, had never been disturbed by any feeling
sufficiently deep to quicken his calm, steady pulse.

There were times, when Leo wondered whether all accepted lovers were as
undemonstrative as her own, and she would have been happier had he
occasionally forgotten professional aspirations, in the charm of her
presence; but her confidence in the purity and fidelity of his
affection was unshaken, even by the dismal predictions of Miss Patty,
who found it impossible to reconcile herself to the failure of her
darling scheme, that Leo should marry her second cousin, Leighton
Douglass, D.D., and devote her fortune to the advancement of his church.

To-day, as she sought pleasant work in