t
the upper crust off a pie, and then, looking down into the very bowels
of life, observe what plots and counterplots, defeats and triumphs,
loves and hates, pains and pleasures, losses and gains, hopes and
despairs, honors and disgraces belonged with the struggles of everyday
humanity. It is by no means sure the survey would repay the cost of
making it, and the chances run heavily that the student would gather
more of grief than good from the lesson. Proceeding, however, by the
hint of contradiction furnished above, had one, at the moment when
Storri was binding Mr. Harley by fetters wrought from the metal of Mr.
Harley's own fearful apprehensions, glanced in upon Richard, he would
have found that worthy young gentleman seated by his fireside, soothing
himself with tobacco smoke, and reveling in thoughts of Dorothy. And the
cogitations of Richard, if written down in words, would have read like
this:

"Why should I defer a denouement that will rejoice them all? Dorothy
loves me--loves me for myself, and for nothing but myself. Who could
have offered deeper proof of it? She has come to me in the face of her
mother, in the face of poverty; she is willing to abandon everything to
become my wife. And if her mother objects--as she does object--why not
cure the objection with a trifle of truth? I am not seeking to make a
conquest of Mrs. Hanway-Harley; that tremendous ambition does not claim
me. I am not to marry her. What she thinks, or why she thinks it, should
not be so important. It is Dorothy whom I love, Dorothy who is to be my
wife--none but Dorothy. No, I'll end a farce which no longer can defend
its own existence. To-morrow I'll seek out my intended mother-in-law,
and make her happy in the only way I may. I trust the good news may not
kill her!" and Richard put on one of those grins of cynicism.

In this frame, Richard retired to bed and dreamed of Dorothy. His heart
was enjoying a prodigious calm; he would no longer play at Democritus;
he would fill Mrs. Hanway-Harley's soul with radiance, restrain to what
extent he might his contempt for that radiance and the reason of it, and
with Dorothy on his arm march away to bliss forever after. No, he would
not have Dorothy to the altar within the moment following the
enthronement of Mrs. Hanway-Harley in the midst of that splendid
happiness he plotted for her. He was not so precipitate. Dorothy should
have a voice and a will in fixing her marriage day; most young women
ha