At fifty, a widower, with three children, he carried off and married Miss Aylesford, who at the time was on a visit to New York,—a girl of eighteen, handsome, accomplished, and worth half a million. In vain had her brother tried to open her eyes to Pompilard’s character as an inveterate fortune-hunter and spendthrift. The wilful young lady would have her way. Pompilard took possession, paid his debts with interest, and, with less than one third of his wife’s property left, once more tried his fortune in Wall Street. This time he won. At sixty he was richer than ever. He became the owner of a domain of three hundred acres on the Hudson,—built palatial residences,—one in the country, and one on the favored avenue that leads to Murray Hill,—bought a steamboat to transport his guests to and from the city,—gave a series of _fêtes_, and kept open houses. But soon one of those panics in the money-market which take place periodically to baffle the calculations and paralyze the efforts of large holders of stocks, occurred to confound Pompilard. In trying to _hold_ his stocks, he was compelled to make heavy sacrifices, and then, in trying to _hedge_, he heaped loss on loss. He had to sell his acres on the Hudson,—then his town house,—finally his horses; and at sixty-nine we find him trying to get a mortgage for thirty thousand dollars on five or six poor little houses, the last remnant from the wreck of his wife’s property. In the hope of effecting this he had persuaded his wife to communicate with her niece, Mrs. Berwick. The brother of Mrs. Pompilard, Robert Aylesford, had inherited a large estate, which he had increased by judicious investments in land on the site of Chicago, some years before that wonderful city had risen like an exhalation in a night from the marsh on which it stands. His wife had died in child-birth, leaving a daughter whom he named after her, Leonora. His own health was subsequently impaired by a malignant fever, caught in humane attendance on a Mr. Carteret, a stranger whom he had accidentally met at Cairo in Southern Illinois. Deeply chagrined at his sister’s imprudent marriage, and feeling that his own health was failing, Aylesford conceived a somewhat romantic project in regard to his only child, Leonora. During a winter he had passed in Italy he had become acquainted with the Ridgways, a refined and intelligent family from Western Massachusetts. One of the members, a lady, kept a boarding-school of deserved celebrity in the town of Lenbridge.