"Let me do something to help," begged the impetuous but good-hearted Aunt Ella. "Bring the girls up some morning early. We will go shopping, then we'll lunch here. We will have to go without our wine and cigars that day, you know, and then we'll go to the modiste's and the milliner's in the afternoon. We'll make a day of it, young man." Quincy leaned back in his easy-chair and blew a ring of blue smoke from one of Uncle Robert's cigars. "Excuse me, Aunt Ella," said he, "but do you ever intend to get married again?" "Quincy Adams Sawyer!" cried Aunt Ella, with an astonished look on her face, "are you joking?" "Certainly not," replied Quincy. "My question was intended to be a serious and respectful inquiry. You are only forty, fine looking, well educated, well connected and wealthy. Why should you not?" "I will answer you seriously then, Quincy. I could not marry again. Ten years' life with Robert Chessman was a greater pleasure than a lifetime with an ordinary man. I was twenty-five when I married him; we lived together ten years; he has been dead for five. How often I have wished that Robert had lived to enjoy his fortune with me. "But he was satisfied," she continued. "'Better be a success at the end,' he used to say, 'than be a success in middle life and fall from your greatness. Look at Wolsey, look at Richelieu, look at Napoleon Bonaparte.' He would often remark: 'Earth has no sadder picture than a broken idol.' He used to consider Abraham Lincoln the most successful man that ever lived, for he died before making a mistake, and when he was strongest in the hearts of the people. "Your question reminds me," continued Aunt Ella, "of something I had in mind to say to you at some future day, but I may as well say it now. How much money have you, Quincy, and what is your income?" "Father gave me fifty thousand dollars outright when I was twenty-one; it pays on an average six per cent. Besides this he allows me two thousand a year for supposed professional services rendered in his law office." "That makes five thousand a year," said Aunt Ella quickly. "Well, I'll allow you five thousand more a year, and the day you are married I'll give you as much outright as your father did. That's unconditional. Now, conditionally, if you bring your wife here and live with me you shall have rooms and board free, and I'll leave you every dollar I possess when I'm through with it. Don't argue with me now," she continued, as Quincy essayed to speak. "Think it over, tell her about it. You will do as you please, of course, but I shall not change my mind on this point." "Didn't your husband leave any relatives that might turn up and prevent any such disposition of your property?"