r Augustus, and a certain young lady when
you came out into the dark passage together."

"That's a downright falsehood, Mrs. Baker."

"Oh--very well. Perhaps I was mistaken. But now, Mr. Graham, if you
don't treat our Miss Madeline well--"

"That's just what I've been telling him," said her brother. "If he
uses her ill, as he did his former wife--breaks her heart as he did
with that one--"

"His former wife!" said Mrs. Baker.

"Haven't you heard of that? Why, he's had two already."

"Two wives already! Oh now, Master Augustus, what an old fool I am
ever to believe a word that comes out of your mouth." Then having
uttered her blessing, and having had her hand cordially grasped by
this new scion of the Staveley family, the old woman left the young
men to themselves, and went to her bed.

"Now that it is done--," said Felix.

"You wish it were undone."

"No, by heaven! I think I may venture to say that it will never come
to me to wish that. But now that it is done, I am astonished at my
own impudence almost as much as at my success. Why should your father
have welcomed me to his house as his son-in-law, seeing how poor are
my prospects?"

"Just for that reason; and because he is so different from other men.
I have no doubt that he is proud of Madeline for having liked a man
with an ugly face and no money."

"If I had been beautiful like you, I shouldn't have had a chance with
him."

"Not if you'd been weighted with money also. Now, as for myself, I
confess I'm not nearly so magnanimous as my father, and, for Mad's
sake, I do hope you will get rid of your vagaries. An income, I know,
is a very commonplace sort of thing; but when a man has a family
there are comforts attached to it."

"I am at any rate willing to work," said Graham somewhat moodily.

"Yes, if you may work exactly in your own way. But men in the world
can't do that. A man, as I take it, must through life allow himself
to be governed by the united wisdom of others around him. He cannot
take upon himself to judge as to every step by his own lights. If
he does, he will be dead before he has made up his mind as to the
preliminaries." And in this way Augustus Staveley from the depth of
his life's experience spoke words of worldly wisdom to his future
brother-in-law.

On the next morning before he started again for Alston and his now
odious work, Graham succeeded in getting Madeline to himself for five
minutes. "I saw both your father and mothe