ke them better than
ever--are they not swept and garnished? "So they enter in and dwell
there, and"--I need not finish the sentence; a thousand sweet though
somewhat shrill voices will save me that trouble--a doleful music--an
ancient tale of wrong--the Song of the Brides! They used to say that a
man never went so hard to hounds after entering the holy estate. If
this be so, I fear it is the only comforting result which follows of
course.

What Flora and Guy said to each other at parting I can not guess.
Neither was of the sentimental order, and both might have taken for
their motto, "Lightly won and lightly lost." Her hand lingered somewhat
long in his as they said farewell, but she was smiling, if any thing,
more saucily than ever. So she went, leaving behind her no tangible
token, except a tiny pearl-colored glove, which Guy twisted rather
pensively between his fingers as he stood on the hall steps, and watched
the carriage disappear down the avenue. Mr. Bruce exulted after his
saturnine fashion, and Isabel Raymond trembled; the one had lost a
strong, unscrupulous ally, the other a formidable enemy.

"Why don't you open those letters, Charley?" Livingstone asked at
breakfast, next morning, pointing to a pile that lay unopened by the
letters plate.

"My dear boy, I haven't the heart to do it," was the reply. "They are
all expressive, I know, of different phases of mercantile despair. I
believe these men keep a supplicant, as Moses maintains a poet. The last
appeal from my saddler was perfectly heartrending: he could not have
written it himself, for he looks as tough as his own pig-skin. If he
had, he would be _impayable_ in more ways than one. What can I do? I
can't come down on the poor old man who has the misfortune to be my
father for more supplies when rents are being reduced fifteen per cent.
The tradesmen must learn to endure. They have a splendid chance of
attaining the victory of suffering."

Bruce smiled complacently to himself, and then superciliously at
Charley. He had just received a letter from his banker, consulting him
as to the disposal of a superfluous thousand or so, and he was
hesitating between some dock shares and a promising railway.

"Yes," Forrester went on, "it's very well for you to talk in that
hardened way, as you did the other night, about detrimentals and second
sons. I wonder how you would like to have an elder brother, a pillar of
learned societies, and as tenacious of life as one