as dazzled by the graceful manners, white hands, and elegance
of these two fashionable ladies. He fell in love for the first time,
was encouraged to pay his addresses, married Augusta, and built the
large house at Foundryville. His wife was above him in birth,
education, and social position; his mother-in-law, during her
lifetime, never permitted him to forget this circumstance.

Augusta accepted his devotion at first very sweetly, as a matter of
course, then a little wearily. The climate of Foundryville gave her
neuralgia. She spent whole winters at Washington and in Florida. He
could not leave his business for a day without anxiety. The master's
hand must never relax its hold of the helm. He was a proud husband and
father; his own nature, sound to the core, accepted without thought of
self-sacrifice the enjoyment of his wife in travel. He knew nothing of
society, or of the world in which she lived at present. That he placed
his family in the peril of evil association in Europe, without himself
there as the natural protector, had not once occurred to his mind.
Like all men who have earned their own fortune, his first aim had been
to bestow on his son and daughter those advantages of study in which
his own youth had been deficient. Hence his acquiescence in the plan
of sending Jack to Switzerland and Cecilia to Paris, Dresden, or Rome.
Mrs. Denvil's arguments in favor of this arrangement had prevailed.
Would not the children have been sent away from Foundryville in any
case?

The foundry absorbed his day as the great furnace devoured its fuel.
As for his evenings? He was not a reading man; his home was silent and
dull. He had acquired the habit of dropping in at the tavern and
playing cards with his clerk, M. Jacques Robin. He learned many new
games, ecarte, baccarat, rouge et noir, among the number. The
diversion amused him. Often he found himself speculating as to a
mistake made the previous evening in the midst of daily business, or a
different plan of playing a winning card the ensuing night.

When the hearthstone is cold, a man seeks forgetfulness elsewhere.

The character of Henry Denvil was on the verge of rapid deterioration.
He failed to perceive it. He was puzzled to account for having lost so
much money in so short a space of time. That was all. Instinct was at
work in the little community, the foundry, where swarthy creatures
with bared arms flitted like demons about the great furnace, moulding
the fused