generations. His chief ambition was to retouch and refurbish the broad domain of his inheritance, so that its lordly manors, ivy-mantled abbeys, and green meadows might know again the peace, poetry, and prosperity of an ideal English home. There would then for the lord of Clyde be happiness and romance equalled by none on earth. For, eager to benefit his fellow-men, he would have within the radius of his own estate a hundred cabins to call in play his invention or humanity; and with one's conscience at rest, he said, could there be a purer joy than to wander with her of one's choice under the ancestral elms of old England, with the September moon o'erhead? This was the Honorable Ernest's dream; but to realize it, he must make money. He had come to the States, so he told me when we grew more intimate, in order to seek it. There were great chances in the far West for a shrewd man with a little capital, and to find some investment that promised large returns was the real object of his journey thither. Already, even since his arrival in New York, he had done extremely well. There was a smart (so he had heard him called) young fellow who had put him into several profitable speculations: very likely I might know him,--Roger Dale was his name; every one said he had made a lot of money, and was one of the coming men of Wall Street. I was kindly to consider this as a confidence, for he did not care to have it noised about that he was other than an idler here. The Honorable Ernest Ferroll's attentions, as I have implied, grew apace from the evening of our introduction, and soon attracted remark. There was an instant recognition of the fitness of the match even from the most envious, and Aunt Helen was the recipient of numerous congratulatory innuendoes. The circumstance of his delaying the date of his journey a week confirmed the general impression of his serious views, and even I began to feel some pangs of conscience on the score of allowing him to fancy that if he did come to the point I should accept him eagerly. In contemplation of this emergency I felt that it was time for me to go home. We both would then have six months in which to think it over. When he should return from the West, it would be time enough for me to come to a decision as to whether I desired to re-gild the poetry of his English home. I was certain that if he insisted on an immediate answer my reply would be unfavorable. But I much preferred to defer any definite proposal; and accordingly, with all the tact at my command, I tried to avoid giving him an opportunity of being left alone with me for any length of time, without making it noticeable to him. Finally, as he seemed likely to become unmanageable despite my precautions, and as he put off again and again his day of departure, I resolved to take refuge in flight.