“Just as I expected,” said Wilford, mentally, as he conducted her to the carriage, “Rachel has taken the _first step_, she will never put on the drab bonnet again.” * * * * * Three years after the events just recorded, the fatal red flag of the auctioneer was seen projecting from one of the upper windows of a stately house, and crowds of the idle, the curious, and the speculating were entering the open door. It was the residence of Harry Wilford. “Well, how things will turn out,” said a fat, frowsy dame, as she seated herself on a velvet sofa and drew a chair in front of her to keep off the throng, “sit down Charlotte,” continued she, addressing a newly married niece, “sit down and let us make ourselves comfortable until the auctioneer has done selling the kitchen furniture. Only think—the last time I was here before Mrs. Wilford had a great party, and the young folks all came in fancy dresses, and I sat on this very sofa. That is only three months ago, and now everything has gone to rack and ruin.” “How did it all happen?” asked a pleasant-looking woman who stood near. “Oh, Mrs. Wilford was awfully extravagant, and her husband thought there was no bounds to his riches, so they lived too fast; ‘burnt their candle at both ends,’ as the saying is. They say Mrs. Wilford hurried on her husband’s ruin, for he had been speculating too deeply, and was in debt, but his creditors would have waited if she had not given that last dashing party.” “How do you know that fact!” asked the other. “Oh, from the best authority, my husband is one of the principal creditors,” replied the dame with a look of dignity, “he told me the whole story as we were going to the party, and declared that he would not stand such dishonest dealings, so the very next morning he was down upon Mr. Wilford, and before twelve o’clock he had compelled him to make an assignment.” And it was among such people—men and women who would sit at the hospitable board with murder in their hearts—who would share in the festivities of a household even while meditating the destruction of that pleasant home—it was among such as these that Wilford had lived—it was for such as these that he had striven to change the simple habits and artless manners of his true-hearted Rachel. It was the dread laugh of such as these which had led him to waste her energies as well as his own in the pursuit of fashion and folly.