“My Alice must be beautiful if she is, as they tell me, like her mother,” and the sightless eyes turned instinctively toward the mother, who, coming to his side, replied: “Alice is like me as I was when you last saw my face—but I have changed since then—there are lines of silver in my hair, and lines of time upon my face.” The blind man shook his head. The picture of the fond girl-wife, who, in his hour of bitter agony had whispered in his ear, “I will be sunlight, moonlight, starlight—everything to you, my husband,” had never changed to him—for faithfully and well that promise had been kept, and it was better perhaps, that he could not see the shadows on her face—shadows which foretold a darker hour than any he had ever known—an hour when the sunlight of her love would set forever. But no such forebodings were around him now. He held his wife and daughter both in his arms, and holding them thus, forgot for a moment that he was blind. “Did you invite Adelaide?” Alice asked at last; and Mr. Warren replied: “Yes, but it is doubtful whether she will come. She is very proud, her father says, and does not wish to put herself in a position to be slighted.” “Oh, father!” Alice cried, “Adelaide Huntington does not know me. I could not slight her because she is poor, and if she comes I will treat her like a royal princess,” and Alice’s face flushed with pleasure as she thought how attentive she would be to the daughter of her father’s “confidential clerk and authorized agent.” Meanwhile, in a distant part of the city, in a dwelling far more humble than that of Hugo Warren, another family group was assembled, father, mother, daughter—all, save old Aunt Peggy, who, thankful for a home which saved her from the almshouse, performed willingly a menial’s part, bearing patiently the whims of the mother, and the caprices of the daughter, the latter of whom proved a most tyrannical and exacting mistress. Tall, dignified, and rather aristocratic in her bearing, Adelaide Huntington was called handsome by many, and admired by those who failed to see the treachery hidden in her large, dark eyes, or the constant effort she made to seem what she was not. To be noticed by those whose position in life was far above her own, was her aim, and when the envied Alice Warren extended to her family an invitation to be present at her birthday party, her delight was unbounded. She would go, of course, she said, “and her father would go with her, and she must have a new dress, too, even if it took every cent they had.” The dress was purchased, and though it was only a simple white muslin, it well became the queenly form of the haughty Adelaide, who, when her toilet was completed, asked her father if “he did not think she would overshadow the diminutive Alice?” “I don’t see why there should be this difference between us,” she continued, as her father made no answer. “Here I must be poor all my life, while she will be rich, unless Mr. Warren chances to fail——”