“Has his brain or his heart softened?” “As you look at life,” said the younger. “He has sent for that clever, improvident, gracefully graceless good-fellow of a good-for-nothing, his nephew, him and his pretty-handed, big-eyed wife—he hadn’t seen either of them since they ran away and were married—sent for them and put them in his great, old house and—didn’t you hear Maceration growling about the luck some people have just before we left? He says the nephew will have all the old man’s property.” “What’s the world coming to?” said the senior, “or what is coming to the world?” [Illustration: [Inkwell]] A PURITAN INGÉNUE BY JOHN SEYMOUR WOOD [Illustration: [Man]] I The Archibald house, on West Forty-— Street, was of the character described as a “modernized front.” A handsome arch in rough stone surmounted the front-door, which was done in polished oak and plate-glass. The stoop was on a level with the sidewalk; a richly carved bow-window jutted out from the second story. “No. 41,” in old iron open work, formed a pretty grating above the door. There was, in fact, nothing which would lead an ordinary person to conceive of the house as given over to boarders, except, possibly, the sign, +----------------------+ | TO LET, FURNISHED. | +----------------------+ which was posted conspicuously below the first-story window, and at an angle which enabled him that ran to read. Old Mr. Archibald’s death, the autumn before, had left his widow rather poorer than she anticipated. He was a great collector of pretty things. His taste was exquisite, and he had gratified it by filling his house with a variety of _bric-à-brac_, pictures, statuary, and old furniture, which made it a centre of attraction to many of the old gentleman’s artistic friends. Mrs. Archibald, loath to dispose of her husband’s art collections, determined to let the house, as it stood, “at an exorbitant figure, to a very rich tenant without children.” Under these terms, on her departure for Europe, her agent was entrusted with the house, and her son Jerome, when he saw her off on the steamer, received a parting injunction, “Be sure and see that they have no children.” Jerome Archibald saw his mother and sisters depart—in no very enviable frame of mind; but he was a good son, and he resolved to forego Newport, if it would tend to dispose of the house as his mother wished, and add to her diminished income.