shedding relationships as the Veteran had done, or proudly refusing inferior connections as Addie had, until the family was left solitary in the person of this one fifteen-year-old girl, in whom the social habit seemed utterly atrophied. Of course, Adelle could have appealed to her aunt's pastor, but it never occurred to her to do that or to make use of any other social machinery. She went back to the Church Street house, occupied her old room, and for the next few days continued the catlike routine of her life as nearly as she could under the changed conditions. Mr. Lovejoy, who continued to be the one most concerned in her welfare, induced her to write a crude little note to the "Washington Trust Company, Dear Sirs," notifying them of the demise of her aunt. The livery-stable man, who was a widower and not beyond middle age, which does not necessarily mean in his class that the wife is dead and buried, but merely permanently absent for one reason or another, might have thrown sentimental eyes upon the girl if she had been different, more of a woman. "She'll likely enough be an heiress some of these days," he said to his employer, old John Pike. Pike was an old resident of Alton and had known all the Clarks. He grunted as if he had heard that song before. "That's what they used to say of her mother, Addie Clark," he remarked, remembering Addie's superior air towards his son. "Well," his manager continued, "I see that trust company's got its signs up all over the Field." "'T ain't the first time there's been signs there," Pike retorted, eyeing a succulent cigar he had succeeded in extracting from an inner pocket, "nor the last either, I expect!" "It looks as if they meant business this time." "They can't get no title," Pike averred, for he banked with the River National, which was now quite bearish on Clark's Field. After a pause the old liveryman asked with a broad smile,--"Why don't you go in for the heiress, Jim?" (Mr. Lovejoy was accounted "gay," a man to please the ladies.) "Me! I never thought of it--she's nothing but a girl. The old one pleased me better--she was a smart woman!" "The girl's got all the property, ain't she?" "I suppose so." "Well, then, you get two bites from the same cherry." The manager made no advances to the girl, however, and for that we must consider Adelle herself as chiefly responsible. For, as a woman, or rather the hope of a woman, she was uninteresting,--still a pale, passive, commonplace girl. What womanhood she might expect was slow in coming to her. Even with the halo of the Clark inheritance she could arouse slight amorous interest in any man. And thus Adelle's insignificance again saved her--shall we say?--from the mean fate of becoming the prey of this "roomer." "No man will ever take the trouble to marry that girl," Mr. Love joy remarked to his employer, "unless she gets her fortune in hard cash." In which prophecy the widower was wrong. IX