.'

This was to Maude; while to his mother, when, she complained that Harold
came there quite too often, and that Maude was running after him too
much, he said:

'Nonsense, mother! let Maude alone. She knows what she is about, and
would not wipe her shoes on Hal Hastings, much less marry him. She is
lonely without Nina and Jerry, and not strong enough to read much
herself, and Hal amuses her; that's all. I know. I have talked with her.
I am keeping watch, and the moment I see any indications of love-making
on either side I will give you warning, and together we will put my fine
chap in his proper place in a jiffy.'

Tom was a young man now of twenty-seven, tall, and finely-formed, with
all his mother's good looks, and his Uncle Arthur's courtliness of
manner when he felt that his companions were worthy of his notice, but
proud, and arrogant, and self-asserting with his inferiors, or those
whom he thought such. He had never overcome his unwarrantable dislike of
Harold, whom he considered far beneath him; but Harold was too popular
to be openly treated with contempt, and so there was a show of
friendship and civility between them, without any real liking on either
side. Tom could not tell just when he began to look upon Jerrie as the
loveliest girl he had ever seen, and to contemplate the feasibility of
making her Mrs. Tom Tracy. His admiration for her had been of slow
growth, for she was worse than a nobody--a child of the Tramp House, of
whose antecedents nothing was known, while he was a Tracy, of Tracy
Park, whom a duchess might be proud to wed. But he had succumbed at last
to Jerrie's beauty, and sprightliness, and originality, and now his love
for her had become the absorbing passion of his life, and he would have
made her his wife at any moment, in the face of all his mother's
opposition. By some subtle intuition, he felt that Harold was his rival,
though he could not fathom the nature of Harold's feeling for Jerrie, so
carefully did the latter conceal it.

'He must regard her as something more than a sister,' he thought; 'he
cannot see her every day without loving her, and by-and-by he will tell
her so, and then my cake is dough. If I can only get him committed to
Maude while Jerrie is away, my way is clear, for I am quite sure she
does not care for Dick, and she would be a fool not to take Tracy Park
if she could get it. And why shouldn't Hal love Maude? She is pretty,
and sweet, and winning, and will some da