For Eunice, expanding into rare beauty during her exile from the gay world, had come back to take her place as a power in its councils, with a new understanding of people and things. Her grave husband was valued for his truth and loyalty and virile force, immeasurably beyond what her earlier love had been for his youthful graces of exterior. With all her heart she loved and was grateful to Farnsworth for “waiting till she came to her senses,” as she often laughingly told him. Long, long ago the sting of Carmichael’s treatment had ceased to pain her. Her fancy for him, in truth, expired that day when poor, blundering Tom had revealed her lover’s treachery. With the marriage of Eunice the pressure of adverse circumstances had been lifted from the Olivers. A former admirer of Miss Chatty’s, a Mr. Ringstead, first discouraged by her mamma because she did not want her daughter to remove to Philadelphia, had gallantly come forward and offered himself anew. Mrs. Oliver, clearing her throat, suavely remarked to Chatty that she had always considered Ringstead a most excellent young man. To which Chatty pertly replied that his excellence was secondary to the fact that he was going to take her out of that hole of a provincial town where Tom had buried them alive. Mrs. Oliver, after the second nuptials in her family, gave it out that she meant to divide her time between her two married daughters and “dear Tom,” whenever he could be persuaded to settle in a decent place; and a short time after went abroad, to the relief of all concerned. Tom, during most of these early years a bird of passage between different headquarters of the railway that had annexed his services, was rarely in New York. When occasionally he had fallen in with some of his old college-mates they had dined and talked together till well into next morning, and word was passed along the line of alumni of their year to this effect: “Tom is all there, every inch of him”; “The same glorious old fellow”; “True as steel”; “Deserves his luck in business”; and the like. But except for these banquets of good-fellowship, Tom had almost dropped out of conventional society, until Eunice Farnsworth at last coaxed him to make her a little visit and take a peep into the world that he had eschewed. It would do him good, she urged, to see some of the pretty girls and lively matrons who would be present at, for instance, a dinner to be given by Mr. Farnsworth’s cousin, Mrs. Ellison, in honor of her daughter’s coming out. Mrs. Ellison, rather a foolish woman Eunice must admit, would be charmed to extend an invitation to him at their request. It was to be a large affair of thirty guests, and Eunice wanted people to see her big handsome brother. “For you are the pride of my heart, Tom; and I don’t care who knows it,” she added, so genuinely that Tom was brought into prompt submission to her will, and promised coöperation in her schemes. * * * * *