Eleanor would never let me do what she called "pauperise" her family; but I found Mr. Beecher a good place on a railroad, over which I had some control, which he filled admirably, and built a new house to let to him. I helped the boys through college, letting them pay me back, and gave them employment in the lines they chose. The girls, under pleasanter auspices, turned out prettier than their eldest sister, and enjoyed society; and one is well married, and another engaged. Katie Day, as I said before, married Herbert Riddell. She was an excellent wife, and made his means go twice as far as any one else could have done. She and Eleanor are called intimate friends with as much reason as Phil and I had been. I don't believe they ever have two words to say to each other when alone together, but then they very seldom are. Eleanor is always lending Katie the carriage, and sending her fruit and flowers when she gives one of her exquisite little dinners; and Katie looks pretty, and sings and talks at our parties, and so it goes on to mutual satisfaction. We all have our youthful dreams, though to few of us is it given to find them realities. Perhaps we might more often do so, did we know the vision when we met it in mortal form. I had had my ideal, a shadowy one indeed--and never, certainly, did I imagine that I was chasing after it when I followed Eleanor down the fir-tree walk. "An eagerness to share the overflowing gifts of fortune with others--a respectful tenderness for those who had but little--a yearning sweetness of sympathy that should disarm even envy, and give the very inequalities of life their fitness and significance." Had I ever clothed my fancies in words like these? I hardly knew; but as I watched my wife in the early days of our married life, shyly and slowly learning to use her new powers, as the butterfly, fresh from the chrysalis, stretches its cramped wings to the sun and air, they took life and shape before me--and I felt the charm of the "ever womanly" that has ever since drawn me on, as it must draw the race. Did Eleanor's love for me spring from gratitude for, or pleasure in, the wealth that was lavished on her with a liberal hand? Who shall say? A girl's love, if love it be, is often won by gifts of but a little higher sort. But if it be worthy of the name, it finds its earthly close in loving for love's sake alone; and then it matters not how it came, for it can never go, and the pulse of its life will be giving, not taking. To Eleanor herself, sure of my heart because so sure of her own, it would matter but little to-day if I had loved her first from pity. That I did not is my own happiness, not hers. [Illustration] THE STORY OF A WALL-FLOWER