e in time to marry her on your birthday?"

"You are mistaken, madame. There is no girl in the world for me but one
of our lovely Americans. That is why I came home from my wanderings. I
wanted to choose one of my own beautiful country women to be my bride."

"I applaud your taste," she smiled. "I have traveled over the whole
world, but I found no women as charming as the Americans; and I am glad
you will choose one to reign at Ellsworth. But have you made your
choice?"

"Ah, madame! that is hard to do among so many lovely girls," he replied,
evasively.

She studied him gravely a moment, then exclaimed, boldly:

"I wish you would make your choice between my nieces, Olive and Ela."

"Dainty is your niece, too, I believe?"--coolly.

"Only my half-niece--the daughter of a half-brother I never loved. I
simply asked her here through kindness to give her a good time. But with
the other two it was different. I own to you I desired you to fall in
love with one, and marry her, while I would make the other my heiress,
thus settling them both luxuriously in life."

"Ah! And what did you expect to do for pretty little
Dainty?"--curiously.

"Nothing. She would return to Richmond, and become a
school-teacher"--irritably.

Love said nothing, only regarded her so gravely, that she snapped:

"Well, what do you say? Can you fall in with my plans?"

"Really, I can't say, you have taken me so much by surprise. Besides,
the choice is very limited. Put Dainty in the balance with the other two
nieces, and I will promise to choose between the three."

"Love, you are surely not thinking seriously of Dainty Chase for a wife?
I assure you that she would not make a fitting mistress for Ellsworth.
You admire brave, spirited women, I know, and Dainty is a weak,
hysterical little coward, taking dreams for realities. Sheila Kelly
assures me that every night since she has been sleeping in her room she
has had a hysterical spell, declaring that she has either seen or heard
the old monk, although nothing at all supernatural has happened to
Sheila, showing that it is nothing but bad dreams and hysterics on
Dainty's part. If she goes on in this way long, she will either lose her
health or her reason; and I am thinking seriously of sending her home to
her mother."

"You will do nothing of the kind. Write at once, and invite her mother
to come to Ellsworth," he said, so sternly that she started with anger,
exclaiming:

"I will not do it! In