r
excuse, too, if you accept the loan on my terms. In any case, I rely on
the sympathy and forbearance of the man to whom I owe my life.

"After what I have now written, there is only one thing to add. I beg to
decline accepting your excuses; and I shall expect to see you tomorrow
evening, as we arranged. I am an obstinate old woman--but I am also your
faithful friend and servant,

"MARY CALLENDER."

Ernest looked up from the letter. "What can this possibly mean?" he
wondered.

But he was too sensible a man to be content with wondering--he decided
on keeping his engagement.

V.

WHAT Doctor Johnson called "the insolence of wealth" appears far more
frequently in the houses of the rich than in the manners of the rich.
The reason is plain enough. Personal ostentation is, in the very nature
of it, ridiculous. But the ostentation which exhibits magnificent
pictures, priceless china, and splendid furniture, can purchase good
taste to guide it, and can assert itself without affording the smallest
opening for a word of depreciation, or a look of contempt. If I am worth
a million of money, and if I am dying to show it, I don't ask you to
look at me--I ask you to look at my house.

Keeping his engagement with Mrs. Callender, Ernest discovered that
riches might be lavishly and yet modestly used.

In crossing the hall and ascending the stairs, look where he might,
his notice was insensibly won by proofs of the taste which is not to
be purchased, and the wealth which uses but never exhibits its purse.
Conducted by a man-servant to the landing on the first floor, he found a
maid at the door of the boudoir waiting to announce him. Mrs. Callender
advanced to welcome her guest, in a simple evening dress perfectly
suited to her age. All that had looked worn and faded in her fine face,
by daylight, was now softly obscured by shaded lamps. Objects of beauty
surrounded her, which glowed with subdued radiance from their background
of sober color. The influence of appearances is the strongest of all
outward influences, while it lasts. For the moment, the scene produced
its impression on Ernest, in spite of the terrible anxieties which
consumed him. Mrs. Callender, in his office, was a woman who had stepped
out of her appropriate sphere. Mrs. Callender, in her own house, was a
woman who had risen to a new place in his estimation.

"I am afraid you don't thank me for forcing you to keep your
engagement," she said, with her friendl