All which would have appeared to Henry Randolph very empty and unprofitable speculation,—mere sound, signifying nothing. Certainly, if one had accused him of insensibility to such suffering as he did not actually see, there are few of us who could afford to cast a stone at him; and he would have said of himself that to cases of real distress his heart and purse were always open; yet, to Frederick Richards’s mind, an invisible, semi-tangible hardness, under the manufacturer’s generous, cordial exterior, was always accounted for and excused by his grandfather’s occupation. That his own Alice had, as he firmly believed, escaped such a core to her loving heart (like the earth’s inmost hypothetical solid centre), was a freak of heredity for which he did not profess to be able to account. Yet, even Alice did not entirely concur in her husband’s opinion about the fortune, as was indeed most natural. She yielded to his feeling upon the matter; but her own was by no means what it would have been had the fruit of speculation been “lifted” bodily from a bank vault, or the slave-trader’s chattels been of pure Caucasian parentage. Also the money would have been in many ways a convenience, and, in case of “anything happening” to herself or the doctor, would have given her an ease of mind in regard to Freddy, which she was by no means able to derive from the thought of an overruling Providence. What Henry Randolph thought of his brother-in-law, we had better not inquire; what he said was this,— “Well, it’s his own affair; and if he can afford to despise such a sum of money, he is better off than I am,” which in a sense was true, since Dr. Richards had as much as he wanted. The amount in question, however, was carefully “left” to Alice in her brother’s will, he being, according to his lights, a just man, whenever speculation would allow him; and, meanwhile, the two families were on studiously cordial terms, and were assembled on Christmas Eve to hail the lighting of the tree Ygdrasil. It was Dr. Richards who told the story before the doors were opened, with Freddy in his arm-chair beside him, Frank and Harry Randolph on the floor at his feet, Louis in the place of honor on his knee, and Pinkie leaning forward from her father’s arms to listen. Pinkie, alias Rosalie, alias Pink Rosebud, was a wilful little maiden not three years old. She had the dark clear skin, brown eyes, and chestnut curls of the Randolphs, and bore indeed so strong a resemblance to Freddy, that her brilliant color and strong, active limbs sent many a pang to his parents’ hearts. But there was no envy in the pain, and the child was well-nigh as dear to both as if she had been their own.