ago in Mrs. Monkton, who was her husband's
cousin. The _illness,_ as it was significantly called, had been
palliated by careful treatment, and was reported to have passed away.
But my father was not to be deceived. He knew where the hereditary
taint still lurked; he viewed with horror the bare possibility of its
reappearing one day in the children of his friend's only daughter; and
he positively refused his consent to the marriage engagement.

The result was that the doors of the Abbey and the doors of Mrs.
Elmslie's house were closed to him. This suspension of friendly
intercourse had lasted but a very short time when Mrs. Monkton died.
Her husband, who was fondly attached to her, caught a violent cold while
attending her funeral. The cold was neglected, and settled on his lungs.
In a few months' time he followed his wife to the grave, and Alfred was
left master of the grand old Abbey and the fair lands that spread all
around it.

At this period Mrs. Elmslie had the indelicacy to endeavor a second time
to procure my father's consent to the marriage engagement. He refused
it again more positively than before. More than a year passed away. The
time was approaching fast when Alfred would be of age. I returned from
college to spend the long vacation at home, and made some advances
toward bettering my acquaintance with young Monkton. They were
evaded--certainly with perfect politeness, but still in such a way as to
prevent me from offering my friendship to him again. Any mortification
I might have felt at this petty repulse under ordinary circumstances
was dismissed from my mind by the occurrence of a real misfortune in
our household. For some months past my father's health had been failing,
and, just at the time of which I am now writing, his sons had to mourn
the irreparable calamity of his death.

This event, through some informality or error in the late Mr. Elmslie's
will, left the future of Ada's life entirely at her mother's disposal.
The consequence was the immediate ratification of the marriage
engagement to which my father had so steadily refused his consent. As
soon as the fact was publicly announced, some of Mrs. Elmslie's more
intimate friends, who were acquainted with the reports affecting the
Monkton family, ventured to mingle with their formal congratulations
one or two significant references to the late Mrs. Monkton and some
searching inquiries as to the disposition of her son.

Mrs. Elmslie always met