e sole claim to consideration lay in his
having discovered some balm for human ills, then a paragraph would have
sufficed for the announcement of his niece's engagement. But he was a
millionaire; he lived in one of the largest houses in town, and his
niece was the greatest catch of the day, measured in dollars;
therefore, the coming marriage was worthy of columns. The existence of
Herbert Talcott became also of prime importance, not because he had
ever done anything, but because he was to marry the heiress of the
Blight fortune. How many a worthy Jones or a poor but noble Robinson
has to descend to an advertisement to make his happiness known to the
careless world? How many a lovely Joan goes to her wedding unread-of
because her forebears were lacking, not in those qualities which open
the gates of heaven, but in acquisitiveness?

To the public it could matter little that Rufus Blight was a simple,
kindly soul who was as contented years ago when he stood behind his
counter as to-day when he sought on the golf-links that sense of action
which is necessary to a man's happiness. The vital fact was that the
trust had paid him millions for his steel-works; not that Penelope was
a simple, lovely woman like thousands of her sisters, but that her
wedding-gifts would be worthy of the daughter of Maecenas. Accustomed
though I had become in the routine of my work to just such a judgment
of vital facts, now that the story told was my own last chapter I made
a silent protest against the manner of the telling.

I thought of Rufus Blight as a quiet man, happiest not in the stately
library, but in his den surrounded by a medley of homely things.
Thinking of Penelope I turned to those vagrant dreams, now forbidden.
In them Penelope and I were to go back to the valley, to ride again
over the mountain road, to stand again as we had stood that day when
she led me over the tangled trail into the sunlit clearing. Those were
joys in which millions had no part. But as I read of the Blight
millions, and of that blue-blooded Talcott line which traced back a
hundred years to a member of the cabinet, it was hard for me to believe
that I knew these exalted beings, that I had sat with Rufus Blight and
talked of days in the valley, that Penelope and I had galloped over the
country astride the same white mule, that I even had engaged with one
so distinguished as Herbert Talcott in a brawl in a restaurant. Gilded
by those who report the comin