was wavy still, and soft and luxurient, but it was iron grey, and she wore it plain, in a knot at the back of her head, and only a few short hairs, which would curl about her forehead in spite of her, softened the severity of her face.  Just when the change began in his sister.  Burton could not remember, for, on the rare occasions when he visited his home he had not been a close observer, and had only been conscious of a desire to shorten his stay as much as possible, and return to his aunt’s house, which was much more to his taste.  He should die if he had to live in that lonely spot, he thought, and in his newly awakened pity for his sister, he said to her, impulsively: 

“Don’t go back there to stay.  Live with me.  I am all alone, and must have some one to keep my house.  Von and I can get on nicely together.”

He made no mention of his father, and he did not half mean what he said to his sister, and had she accepted his offer he would have regretted that it had ever been made.  But she did not accept it, and she answered him at once: 

“No, Burton, so long as father lives I must stay with him, and you will be happier without than with me.  We are not at all alike.  But I thank you for asking me all the same, and now it is time for me to go, if I take the four o’clock train.  Father will be expecting me.”

Burton went with her to the train, and saw her into the car, and bought her Harper’s Monthly, and bade her good-by, and then, in passing out, met and lifted his hat to the Misses Grey, Lucy and Geraldine, who had been visiting in Boston, and were returning to Allington.

This encounter drove his sister from his mind, and made him think of his aunt’s injunction to marry one of the Greys.  Lacy was the prettier and gentler of the two, the one whom everybody loved, and who would make him the better wife.  Probably, too, she would be more easily won than the haughty Geraldine, who had not many friends.  And so, before he reached his house on Beacon street, he had planned a matrimonial campaign and carried it to a successful issue, and made sweet Lucy Grey the mistress of his home.

It is not our purpose to enter into the details of Burton’s wooing.  Suffice it to say, that it was unsuccessful, for Lucy said “No,” very promptly, and then he tried the proud Geraldine, who listened to his suit, and, after a little, accepted him, quite as much to his surprise as to that of her acquaintances, who knew her ambitious nature.

“Anything to get away from stupid Allington,” she said to her sister Lucy, who she never suspected had been Burton’s first choice.  “I hate the country, and I like Boston, and like Mr. Jerrold well enough.  He is good-looking, and well-mannered, and has a house and twenty thousand dollars, a good position in the bank, and no bad habits.  Of course, I would rather that his father and sister were not such oddities:  but I am not marrying them, and shall take good care to keep them in their places, which places are not in Boston.”