WHILE the events detailed in the last few chapters were progressing, the time for Dunbar's marriage with the wealthy Miss Gay was drawing near. A handsome house was taken in Arch street, at a rent of eight hundred dollars, and furnished at an expense of nearly ten thousand. The young attorney had a great idea of style, and was anxious to make an impression on the public mind. The fact that he was rising in the world, he wished all to know, and he thought that with a hundred thousand dollars he could make quite an impression. The hundred thousand dollars were to be made up by his future wife's fortune, his share of the thirty thousand dollars to be received from Harrison for betraying and ruining his client, and by what he had already accumulated. The wedding occasion was to be celebrated by a large party given by the aunt of Miss Gay, at which the most fashionable people in the city were to be present. Long before this period, Dunbar had removed from his father's house as too obscure and humble for one of his standing, and for three or four years boarded at a large hotel in Chestnut-street. He did not go home very often, and when he did there was something in his manner that affected his parents disagreeably. Evidently he felt as much contempt for their low condition and ignorance as he felt pride in his own elevation. In thinking of the large wedding party to be, and of the crowd of great and fashionable people who were to be there, he could not help feeling unpleasant at the idea of having such plain, common-looking people present as his parents, and especially under the acknowledgment of bearing so important a relation to him. As to his sisters, they had degraded themselves in his eyes, and he had no thought of inviting them and their "vulgar husbands." He was under no obligation, he felt, to do that. "You will, of course, be at the wedding," he said to his father and mother, about a week before the event named was to take place. His tone belied his words! If he had said, "Of course you will not be at the wedding," the words and tone would have been in true correspondence. "I suppose we ought to be there," replied old Mr. Dunbar, a little coldly, "I hardly think there are any who have a better right." "You will invite Ellen and Mary," said the mother. "I can't invite them without inviting their husbands, and I certainly shall not introduce them to my friends as brothers-in-law." "And why not, pray?" asked the father, with some sternness of manner. "Low, vulgar mechanics among the first people of the city? I must beg to be excused." And the young attorney drew himself up proudly. "They are honest and honorable men; characters not too plenty even among your first people, as you call them." There was an indignant expression in the old man's voice.