r forget that original disheartening blow, and how that
from it sprang all the ills of his life--everything connected with his
gloom, and the lassitude in business we used so often to see about him.'

'I remember what he said once,' returned the brother, 'when I sat up
late with him. He said, "Owen, don't love too blindly: blindly you
will love if you love at all, but a little care is still possible to
a well-disciplined heart. May that heart be yours as it was not mine,"
father said. "Cultivate the art of renunciation." And I am going to,
Cytherea.'

'And once mamma said that an excellent woman was papa's ruin, because he
did not know the way to give her up when he had lost her. I wonder where
she is now, Owen? We were told not to try to find out anything about
her. Papa never told us her name, did he?'

'That was by her own request, I believe. But never mind her; she was not
our mother.'

The love affair which had been Ambrose Graye's disheartening blow was
precisely of that nature which lads take little account of, but girls
ponder in their hearts.

5. FROM OCTOBER THE NINETEENTH TO JULY THE NINTH

Thus Ambrose Graye's good intentions with regard to the reintegration of
his property had scarcely taken tangible form when his sudden death put
them for ever out of his power.

Heavy bills, showing the extent of his obligations, tumbled in
immediately upon the heels of the funeral from quarters previously
unheard and unthought of. Thus pressed, a bill was filed in Chancery to
have the assets, such as they were, administered by the Court.

'What will become of us now?' thought Owen continually.

There is in us an unquenchable expectation, which at the gloomiest time
persists in inferring that because we are _ourselves_, there must be a
special future in store for us, though our nature and antecedents to the
remotest particular have been common to thousands. Thus to Cytherea and
Owen Graye the question how their lives would end seemed the deepest of
possible enigmas. To others who knew their position equally well with
themselves the question was the easiest that could be asked--'Like those
of other people similarly circumstanced.'

Then Owen held a consultation with his sister to come to some decision
on their future course, and a month was passed in waiting for answers to
letters, and in the examination of schemes more or less futile. Sudden
hopes that were rainbows to the sight proved but mists to the touch.
I