The second marriage resulted happily, perhaps the more happily because no children came to usurp the place of the loving, petted, and yet willful little Nina. Mrs. Selwyn was a good woman, and having no daughter of her own lavished all the love she could spare from her son upon her second husband’s only child. She was neither calculating nor mercenary yet as the years rolled on, vague, pleasant dreams came to her of a future in which the lives of Talbot Strangemore, her son, and of Nina Selwyn, her little step-daughter, were bound together with a flowery chain. Mr. Selwyn shared these pleasant dreams. He had a profound admiration for his step-son, then a youth ten years the senior of little Nina. Talbot Strangemore merited all the loving admiration and pride that was bestowed upon him. He was noble, gifted, and remarkably handsome in a bold, manly style. He was in college, but all his vacations were spent at Selwyn Heights, his step-father’s stately residence, where he enjoyed himself intensely in the manly sports of hunting, fishing and rowing, delighting in such recreations after the confinement of his Alma Mater. Little Nina, whose spirits were as gay and light as a wild bird’s, was his frequent companion at these times, and the young heiress regarded her step brother with a species of hero-worship that was carefully fostered by her parents, who, while they encouraged the affection of the pair, tried to preserve it from a fraternal cast. Nina was never permitted to call Talbot her big brother any more than he was allowed to term her his little sister. They were never suffered to forget that there was no tie of real kinship between them. “For if they grow up loving each other as brother and sister they will never think of each other in any nearer, dearer light,” argued Mrs. Selwyn, and she took the greatest pains to manage affairs agreeably to the aim she had in view, although she gave no inkling of her designs to the boy and girl for whom in innocent unconsciousness she was laying up a heritage of woe. Both she and Mr. Selwyn thought it would be for the happiness of both, if they could one day be united in marriage. Talbot was so manly and gifted, but had very little money, while Nina had so much, and although she was a delicate, thin little creature now, she gave promise of future beauty of a rare and unusual type, for she had hair of the real golden shade and eyes as dark as pansies. She was thin and sunburned now, for they could never keep her in the house, but the tan would wear off when she was a young lady and she would be a real beauty, Mrs. Selwyn averred knowingly, and, managed rightly, Talbot could not help falling in love with the young heiress.