he lion's share!

J.C.'s great faults were selfishness, indolence, and love of money,
and Maude's loss affected him deeply; still, there was no redress,
and playfully bidding her "not to cry for the milkman's spilled
milk," he left her on the very day when Dr. Kennedy returned. Maude
knew J.C. was keenly disappointed; that he was hardly aware what he
was saying, and she wept for him rather than for the money.

Dr. Kennedy could offer no advice--no comfort. It had always been a
maxim of his not to make that man her guardian; but women would do
everything wrong, and then, as if his own trials were paramount to
hers, he bored her with the story of his troubles, to which she
simply answered, "I am sorry;" and this was all the sympathy either
gained from the other!

In the course of a few days Maude received a long letter from James
De Vere. He had heard from J.C. of his misfortune, and very tenderly
he strove to comfort her, touching at once upon the subject which he
naturally supposed lay heaviest upon her heart. The marriage need
not be postponed, he said; there was room in his house and a place
in his own and his mother's affections for their "Cousin Maude." She
could live there as well as not. Hampton was only half an hour's
ride from Rochester, and J. G., who had been admitted at the bar,
could open an office in the city until something better presented.

"Perhaps I may set him up in business myself," he wrote. "At all
events, dear Maude, you need not dim the brightness of your eyes by
tears, for all will yet be well. Next June shall see you a bride,
unless your intended husband refuse my offer, in which case I may
divine something better."

"Noble man," was Maude's exclamation, as she finished reading the
letter, and if at that moment the two cousins rose up in contrast
before her mind, who can blame her for awarding the preference to
him who had penned those lines, and who thus kindly strove to remove
from her pathway every obstacle to her happiness.

James De Vere was indeed a noble-hearted man. Generous, kind, and
self-denying, he found his chief pleasure in doing others good, and
he had written both to Maude and J.C. just as the great kindness of
his heart had prompted him to write. He did not then know that he
loved Maude Remington, for he had never fully analyzed the nature of
his feelings toward her. He knew he admired her very much, and when
he wrote the note J.C. withheld he said to himself, "If she a