But though Eva heard of the remark she did not take the hint; she could never forgive Patty Groves for locking her up in her room while her grandfather died. The malice and cruelty of that deed stood alone like the act of a fiend. Coming back to New York with her father to his palatial Fifth Avenue home, Eva had been introduced to fashionable society by the widowed sister of Mr. Somerville, who presided over his stately home. His proud mother and elder sister, whose cruel scheming had deceived his young wife, and driven her from home in despair, were both dead, and the younger sister being in boarding school at the time, and now a childless widow, knew just enough of the tragedy to welcome Eva as one who had been wronged, and to whom she owed infinite love and care, in atonement for the errors of the dead. This lady, Mrs. Hamilton, had a handsome stepson, Reginald, who lived in apartments and led the gay life of a young millionaire, but came often to the mansion, ostensibly to visit his stepmother, but in reality to sun himself in the light of Eva’s bewildering dark eyes. The young aristocrat had decided long ago, on first seeing Eva, that she would be the proper match for him when he decided to marry, after sowing a crop of very wild oats. She was beautiful, well-born, and would have an immense fortune from her father--all three were requisites that Reginald Hamilton desired in a wife. In the two months that she stayed in New York, before going abroad, he laid siege to her heart with ardor, wondering why the pretty little rustic seemed so indifferent to all his manly charms, but only piqued to greater devotion by her hauteur. On her return home, more beautiful, more cultured, more fascinating than before, Reginald Hamilton was genuinely enthralled, and took advantage of his position as Mrs. Hamilton’s stepson to visit the Fifth Avenue home daily, a freedom he could not otherwise have ventured on. Society soon began to couple his name with Eva’s, predicting that it would certainly be a match, and a very suitable one. As Eva stood in the window gazing out at the fast-falling snow and listening to the merry jingle of sleigh bells, she was thinking, somewhat ruefully, of this same Reginald Hamilton, saying to herself: “Poor Reggie, I am afraid I cannot stave off a declaration from him much longer, and I wish I knew how I could refuse him without giving mortal offense to everybody. I can see that auntie has her heart quite set on the match, and that papa silently approves, while as for Reggie himself, it is plain to be seen, despite all the snubs he gets from me, that he thinks he has only to ask and have! He is spoiled by the adulation of all the girls, and I suppose he cannot conceive of any one refusing him.”