Despite the fact that forty years had left their whitening touches on his head and luxuriant beard, Merton Minge, who had never been handsome, even in youth, was sufficiently agreeable in appearance to render him an object of deep interest in the circle where he moved. Medium-statured, and very robust, a healthful ruddy tinge robbed his complexion of that sallow hue which mercantile pursuits are apt to induce, and brightened the deep-set black eyes which his debtors considered mercilessly keen, cold, and incisive. The square face, with its broad, full forehead, and deep curved furrow dividing the thick straight brows,--its well-shaped but prominent nose, and massive jaws and chin partially veiled by a grizzled beard that swept over his deep chest,--was suggestive of ledgers rent-roll, and stock-boards, rather than aesthetics, chivalry, or sentimentality. The only son of a proud but impoverished family, who were eager to retrieve their fortune, he had early in life married the imperious spoiled daughter of a Boston millionaire, whose dower consisted of five hundred thousand dollars, and a temper that eclipsed the unamiable exploits of ancient and modern shrews. Hopeless of domestic happiness in a union to which affection had not prompted him, Mr. Minge devoted himself to the rapid accumulation of wealth, and by judicious and successful speculations had doubled his fortune, ere, at the comparatively early age of thirty, he was left a childless widower. Whether he really thanked fate for his timely release, his most intimate friends were never able to ascertain, for he wore mourning, badges for three years, and conducted himself in all respects with exemplary dignity and scrupulous propriety. But the frigid indifference with which he received all matrimonial overtures indicated that his conjugal experience was not so rosy as to tempt him to repeat the experiment. His mother was a haughty, frivolous woman, jealously tenacious of her position as one of the oligarchs of _le beau monde_, and his fragile sister had from childhood been the victim of rheumatism that frequently rendered her entirely helpless. To these two and their fashionable friends, he abandoned his elegant home, costly equipages, and opera-box, reserving only a suite of rooms, his handsome riding-horse, and yacht. Grave and unostentatious, yet not moody,--neither impulsively liberal and generous nor habitually penurious and uncharitable,--he led a quiet and monotonously easy life, varied by occasional trips to foreign lands, and comforted by the assurance that his income-tax was one of the heaviest in the state. Two years after the death of his mother, he took his sister a second time to Europe, hoping that the climate of the Levant might relieve her suffering; and upon the steamer in which he crossed the Atlantic he met Salome Owen.