or. Her mother was a widow, sickly and lame, and Dorothy
in her girlhood had worked in the cotton mills at Langley, and bound
shoes for the firm of Newell & Brothers, and had taught a district
school, 'by way of elevating herself,' but the elevation did not pay,
and she went back to the mills in the day-time and her shoes at night,
and rebelled at the fate which had made her so poor and seemed likely to
keep her so.

But there was something better in store for her than binding shoes, or
even teaching a district school, and, from the time when young Frank
Tracy came to Langley as clerk in the Newell firm, Dorothy's life was
changed and her star began to rise. They both sang in the choir,
standing side by side, and sometimes using the same book, and once or
twice their hands met as both tried to turn the leaves together.
Dorothy's were red and rough, and not nearly as delicate as those of
Frank, who had been in a store all his life: and still there was a
magnetism in their touch which sent a thrill through the young man's
veins, and made him for the first time look critically at his companion.

She was very pretty, he thought, with bright black eyes, a healthful
bloom, and a smile and blush which went straight to his heart and made
him her slave at once. In three months' time they were married and
commenced housekeeping in a very unostentatious way, for Frank had
nothing but his salary to depend upon. But he was well connected, and
boasted some blue blood, which, in Dorothy's estimation, made amends for
lack of money. The Tracys of Boston were his distant relatives, and he
had a rich bachelor uncle who spent his winters in New Orleans and his
summers in Shannondale, at Tracy Park, on which he had lavished fabulous
sums of money. From this uncle Frank had expectations, though naturally
the greater part of his fortune would go to his god-son and name-sake,
Arthur Tracy, who was Frank's elder brother, and as unlike him as one
brother could well be unlike another.

Arthur was scholarly in his tastes, quiet and gentlemanly in his
manners, with a musical voice which won him friends at once, while in
his soft black eyes there was a peculiar look of sadness, as if he were
brooding over something which filled him with regret. Frank was very
proud of his brother, and with Dorothy felt that he was honored when,
six months after their marriage, he came for a day or so to visit them,
and with him his intimate friend Harold Hastings,