There was to be a wedding in St. James’s Church, Boston, and the persons most interested were Isabella Helena Burleigh and B. Franklin Irving, whose bridal cards were sent to Beechwood one morning a few weeks after Laura’s death. It was to be a most brilliant affair, and was creating considerable excitement both in Belvidere and in Boston, where by virtue of her boasted blood, which she traced back to Elizabeth’s time, and by dint of an indomitable will, Miss Burleigh was really quite a belle. It was her _blood_ which had won upon Mrs. Walter Scott, who said she thought more of family pedigree than money, and Miss Burleigh’s pedigree was without taint of any kind. So Mrs. Walter Scott was pleased, or feigned to be so, and went to Boston, and took rooms at the Revere, at fifteen dollars per day, and had her meals served in her private parlor; and Frank brought down his own horses and carriage, and took another suite of rooms, and paid at the rate of twenty dollars per day for all his extravagances in the way of cigars and wine, and friends invited to dinner. His evenings he spent with his bride-elect in her home on Beacon Street, where everything betokened that the proprietors were not rich in worldly goods, if they were in blood. The Burleighs were very poor, else the spirited Bell, who had more brains than heart, had never accepted Frank Irving. She knew just what he was, and, alone with her young sister Grace, mimicked him, and called him “green,” and when she was with him in company, shivered, and grew hot and cold, and angry at some of his remarks, which betokened so little sense. He was gentlemanly to a certain extent, and knew all the ins and outs of good society; but he was not like the men with whom Bell Burleigh had associated all her life; not like the men she respected for what was in their heads rather than in their purse. But as these men had thus far been unattainable, and the coffers at home were each year growing lower and lower as her father grew older and older, Bell swallowed all sentiment, and the ideas she had once had of a husband to whom she could look up, and accepted Frank Irving and Millbank. But not without her price. She made Frank _pay_ for her _blood_ and charms, and pay munificently, too. First, one hundred thousand dollars were to be settled on herself, to do with as she pleased. Next, sister Grace and her father were both to live with her at Millbank, and Frank was to clothe and support Grace as if she were his own sister. Then, her brother Charlie’s bills at college must be paid, and after he was graduated he must come to Millbank as his home until he went into business.