sat there waiting for the foreign lion, and for the whistle of the engine which was to herald his approach. “I wonder if he has changed,” said the mother, glancing at the opposite mirror and arranging the puffs of glossy false hair which shaded her aristocratic forehead. “Of course he has,” returned Miss Asenath. “Nearly two years of Paris society must have imparted to him that _air distingue_ so desirable in a young man who has travelled.” “He’ll hardly fail of making a good match now,” Miss Eudora remarked. “I think we must manage to visit Saratoga or some of those places next summer. Mr. Gardner found his wife at Newport, and they say she’s worth half a million.” “But horridly ugly,” and Anna looked up from the reverie in which she had been indulging. “Lottie says she has tow hair and a face like a fish. John would never be happy with such a wife.” “Possibly you think he had better have married that sewing girl about whom he wrote us just before going to Europe,” Miss Eudora suggested. “No, I don’t,” Anna answered, mildly. “I am almost as anxious as yourselves for him to marry rich, for I know you need money sadly, and my income is not so large as for your sakes I wish it was, but poverty and love are better than riches and hatred, and I have always felt a strange interest in that young girl, whom I know John loved, or he would never have written to see how we would bear his taking a portionless bride.” “I told him plainly how _I_ would bear it. She should never cross _my_ threshold,” and the face of Mrs. Richards, the mother, was highly indicative of the feeling she entertained for the young, penniless girl, whom it would seem John Richards M. D., had thought to marry. “I trust he is over that fancy,” she continued, “and ready to thank me for the strong letter I wrote him.” “Yes, but the girl,” and Anna leaned her white cheek in her whiter hand. “None of us know the harm his leaving her may have done. Don’t you remember he wrote how much she loved him—how gentle and confiding her nature was, how to leave her then might prove her ruin?” “Our little Anna is growing very eloquent upon the subject of sewing girls,” Miss Asenath said, rather scornfully, and Anna rejoined, “I am not sure she was a sewing girl. He spoke of her as a school girl.” “But it is most likely he did that to mislead us,” said the mother. “The only boarding school he knows anything about is the one where Lottie was. He often visited her, but I’ve questioned her closely, and she cannot think of a single young lady whom he fancied more than another. All were in love with him, she said, herself included. If he were not her uncle by marriage I should not object to Lottie as a daughter,” was the next remark, whereupon there ensued a conversation touching the merits and demerits of a certain Lottie Gardner, whose father had taken for a second wife Miss Laura Richards.