she were not quite certain, as she said,--

"Was there not something about him when you were boys? He was coarse and
rough, wasn't he? and Agatha used to worry. I knew it was only a boy's
folly; but she was glad when you went to college, and I think--there was
his sister"--her maternal instincts taking alarm.

"No, he never had a sister. His father died, and he staid at home. His
mother was delicate, and his grandmother old. She is dead, and he gets
his small fortune from her. No, he was not coarse nor rude, but he was
my champion in boyhood, my hero then; and it is the shame of my life
that I should have let him drop out of it because I was the richer of
the two. I despise myself for any thing so narrow and unmanly, and yet
he was generous enough to forgive. I do not wonder at Miss Barry's
choice when she contrasted us, and I honor her to-day for her
discrimination. She never encouraged me, blind, idiotic fool that I was!
and I have only my wretched vanity to blame. He is fully worthy of her,
and that is the highest compliment I can pay him."

"Very magnanimous for a rejected lover," commented Irene with a touch of
sarcasm.

"But you _did_ love Sylvie?" Mrs. Lawrence said, bewildered by his rapid
defence.

"I blush now at the thought of having offered her such a paltry regard.
To me she will always be a sweet and peerless woman. I am glad she will
have the strength of manhood to lean upon, the purity of its honor to
trust, the exceeding tenderness of a soul that will never know a narrow
or grudging thought, to confide in. All my years look poor and barren
beside his."

"I can never forgive her"--

"You must, you must!" and Fred seized his mother's hand, pressing it to
his lips. "There is nothing to forgive," he went on. "You would not have
had her throw aside the love of her life for my fancied fortune that has
taken wings. It was my blunder. And I want to say that I have taken up
my old friendship for Jack Darcy, come back to the truth that money is
one of the incidental surroundings of the man, but it can never be the
man himself."

Irene's haughty lip curled, but no one openly gainsaid Fred.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE winter was a rather open one, with but little snow. Matters were
somewhat better in Yerbury, but bad enough, Sylvie Barry thought. The
churches began their usual work,--parish aids, clothing-clubs, and
sewing-societies. It was as she said: they begged from the rich to give
to the poor. W