ed to regard him as the one man in the
world most worthy of love and reverence, and she knew that he had
never ceased to look upon her with the same feelings.

Latterly they had had but scant opportunities of meeting. Madam
threw every possible obstacle in the way of her daughter's entering
the doors of that house, and kept her own closed against those of
her former friends whom she now chose to regard as her inferiors.
Madam had never been liked. She had always held her head high, and
shown that she thought herself too good for the place she occupied.
Her house had never been popular. No neighbours had ever been in
the habit of running in and out to exchange bits of news with her,
or ask for the loan of some recipe or household convenience. It had
not been difficult to seclude herself in her gradually increasing
dignities, and only her daughter had keenly felt the difference
when she had intimated that she wished the intimacy between her
family and that of the Harmers to cease.

Frederick had long since taken to himself other associates of a
more congenial kind. The Master Builder went to and fro as before,
permitting his wife full indulgence of her fads and fancies, but
resolved to exercise his own individual liberty, and quite
unconscious of the blow that was being inflicted upon his daughter,
who was naturally tied by her mother's commands, and forced to
abide by her regulations.

Madam had been quick to see that if she did not take care Reuben
Harmer would shortly aspire to the hand of her daughter, and she
was not sure but that her husband would be weak enough to let the
foolish girl please herself in the matter, and throw away what
chance she had of marrying out of the city, and rising a step in
life.

Madam pinned her main hopes of a social rise for herself in the
marriages of her children. She fondly believed that Frederick, with
his good looks and his wealth, could take his pick even amongst
high-born ladies, and not all the good-natured ridicule of her
husband served to weaken this conviction. She was not a great
admirer of her daughter's charms, but she knew that the girl was
admired, and had been noticed more than once by the fine ladies who
had come to look at her furniture and hangings. She had a plan of
her own for getting Gertrude into the train of some fine Court
dame, and once secured in such a position, her fair face and ample
dowry might do the rest. If her son and daughter were well married,