r;
you shouldn't. Auntie, what do you mean?"

"Marriage, my dear, marriage," wailed the old lady.

"Fudge?" cried the doctor. "Here, take your medicine. No; I'll pour
you out a fresh glass. You've poisoned that one with salt water."

"I haven't, Fred."

"You have, madam. I saw two great drops fall in--plop. Come, swallow
your physic. Bel, give her one of those grapes to take after it."

"No, no, no!" cried the old lady, protesting. "Don't, Laury;" but her
niece held the glass to her lips till she gulped the claret down, and it
made her cough, while the visitor exchange glances with the doctor.

"I--I didn't want it, Fred; and it's not fudge. Oh, my dear Isabel, be
warned before it is too late. Marriage is a delusion and a snare."

"Yes, and Bel's caught fast, auntie. Just going to pop her finger into
the golden wire."

"Don't, my dear; be warned in time," cried the old lady, piteously. "I
was once as young and beautiful as you are, and I said yes, and was
married, only to be forsaken at the end of ten years, to become a weary,
unhappy woman, with only three thousand four hundred and twenty-two
pounds left; and it's all melting slowly away, while when it's all gone
Heaven only knows what's to become of me."

"Poor old auntie!" said Laura Chester soothingly, taking the old lady's
head on her shoulder; but it would shake all the same.

"I had a house of my own, and now I have come down to keeping my
nephew's. Don't you marry, my poor child: take warning by me. Men are
so deceitful."

"Wrong, auntie. Men were deceivers ever."

"I'm not wrong, Fred. You've been a very good boy to me, but you're a
grown man now, and though I love you I couldn't trust you a bit."

"Thank you, aunt dear."

"I can't, my love, knowing what I do. Human nature is human nature."

"Aunt dear, for shame!" cried Laura.

"No, my dear, it's no shame, but the simple truth, and I always told
your poor father it was a sin and a crime to expose a young man to such
temptation."

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the doctor, boisterously. "Here, Bel dear, don't
you trust me."

The young people's eyes met, full of confidence, and the old lady shook
her head again.

"I know what the world is and what men are," she continued, "and nothing
shall make me believe that some of these fashionable patients have
anything the matter with them."

"Oh, you wicked old woman!" cried the doctor.

"I'm not, Fred," she cried angrily.

"Oh yes,