h she was evidently so well satisfied, and succeeded in marrying her
and bringing her as far as our station below there, without her having
the least suspicion of the splendor she was destined for. And now, Mr.
Trevitt, picture, if you can, the scene of that first arrival. I have
heard it described by him and I have heard it described by her. He was
dressed plainly; so was she; and lest the surprise should come before
the proper moment, he had brought her on a train little patronized by
his friends. The sumptuousness of the solitary equipage standing at the
depot platform must, in consequence, have struck her all the more
forcibly, and when he turned and asked her if she did not admire this
fine turn-out, you can imagine the lovely smile with which she
acknowledged its splendor and then turned away to look up and down for
the street-car she expected to take with him to their bridal home.

"He says that he caught her back with the remark that he was glad she
liked it because it was hers and many more like it. But she insists that
he did not say a word, only smiled in a way to make her see for whom the
carriage door was being held open. Such was her entrance into wealth and
love and alas! into trouble. For the latter followed hard upon the two
first. Mr. Ocumpaugh's mother, who had held sway at Homewood for thirty
years or more, was hard as the nether millstone. She was a Rathbone and
had brought both wealth and aristocratic connections into the family.
She had no sympathy for penniless beauties (she was a very plain woman
herself) and made those first few years of her daughter-in-law's life as
nearly miserable as any woman's can be who adores her husband. I have
heard that it was a common experience for this sharp-tongued old lady to
taunt her with the fact that she brought nothing into the family but
herself--not even a _towel_; and when two years passed and no child
came, the biting criticisms became so frequent that a cloud fell over
the young wife's sensitive beauty, which no after happiness has ever
succeeded in fully dispelling. Matters went better after Gwendolen came,
but in reckoning up the possible defects in Mrs. Ocumpaugh's character
you should never forget the twist that may have been given to it by that
mother-in-law."

"I have heard of Madam Ocumpaugh," I remarked, rising, anxious to end an
interview whose purport was more or less enigmatic to me.

"She is dead now--happily. A woman like that is accountab