ry to her,
although, as she expresses it, "he bores her stiff," because her sex
responds to the tribute; she plays lady patroness to Dick, and tries to
intrigue him into a soft job; and as for Harry she goes on telling him
month after month that unless he forswears sack and lives cleanly she
will visit him with her high displeasure. Meanwhile, most of these
satellites have affaires de coeur of their own, some respectable,
others not; they regard the young lady with engaging frankness as a
woman and a sister, they have the run of her father's house, and would
feel insulted if anybody questioned the perfect correctness of their
behaviour. Each man has, say, half a dozen houses where he is welcomed
on the same understanding. Of course, when one particular young man and
one particular young woman read lunatic things in each other's eyes,
then the rest of the respective quasi-sisters and quasi-brothers have
to go hang. (In parenthesis, I may state that the sisters are more
ruthlessly sacrificed than the brothers.) At any rate, frankness is the
saving quality of the modern note.

In the case of Althea, there had been no sign of such specialisation.
She could not have gone forth, poor child, to meet the twenty with whom
she was known to be on terms of careless comradeship. She had gone from
her home, driven by God knows what impulse, to walk in the
starlight--there was no moon--along the banks of the canal. In the
darkness, had she missed her footing and stepped into nothingness and
the black water? The Coroner's Jury decided the question in the
affirmative. They brought in a verdict of death by misadventure. And up
to the date on which I begin this little Chronicle of Wellingsford,
namely that of the summons to Wellings Park, when I heard of the death
of young Oswald Fenimore, that is all I knew of the matter.

Throughout July my friends were like dead people. There was nothing
that could be said to them by way of consolation. The sun had gone out
of their heaven. There was no light in the world. Having known Death as
a familiar foe, and having fought against its terrors; having only by
the grace of God been able to lift up a man's voice in my hour of awful
bereavement, and cry, "O Death, where is thy sting, O Grave, thy
Victory?" I could suffer with them and fear for their reason. They
lived in a state of coma, unaware of life, performing, like automata,
their daily tasks.

Then, in the early days of August, came the Trum