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Six years prior to the commencement of our story, New
Haven boasted not a better or wealthier citizen than Harcourt
Linwood, of whose subsequent failure and death we
have heard from Uncle Israel. The great beauty of his
only child, Ada, then a girl of nearly thirteen, was the
subject of frequent comment among the circle in which he
moved. No pains were spared with her education, and
many were the conjectures as to what she would be when
time had matured her mind and beauty.

Hugh St. Leon, of New Orleans, then nineteen years
of age, and a student at Yale, had frequently met Ada at
the house of his sister, Mrs. Durant, whose eldest daughter,
Jenny, was about her own age. The uncommon
beauty of the child greatly interested the young southerner,
and once, in speaking of his future prospects to his
sister, he playfully remarked, “Suppose I wait for Ada
Linwood.”

“You cannot do better,” was the reply, and the conversation
terminated.

The next evening there was to be a child's party at the
house of Mrs Durant, and as Hugh was leaving the house,
Jenny bounded after him, saying, “Oh, Uncle Hugh,
you'll come to-morrow night, won't you? No matter if
you are a grown up man, in the junior class, trying to
raise some whiskers! You will be a sort of restraint, and
keep us from getting too rude. Besides, we are going to
have tableaux, and I want you to act the part of bridegroom
in one of the scenes.”

“Who is to be the bride?” asked Hugh.

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“Ada Linwood. Now I know you'll come, won't you?”

“I'll see,” was Hugh's answer, as he walked away.

Jenny well knew that “I'll see” meant “yes,” and tying
on her bonnet, she hastened off to tell Ada that Uncle
Hugh would be present, and would act the part of bridegroom
in the scene where she was to be bride.

“What! that big man?” said Ada. “How funny!”

Before seven the next evening Mrs. Durant's parlors
were filled, for the guests were not old enough or fashionable
enough to delay making their appearance until morning.
Hugh was the last to arrive, for which Jenny scolded
him soundly, saying they were all ready for tableaux.
“But come, now,” said she, “and let me introduce you to
the bride.”

In ten minutes more the curtain rose, and Hugh St.
Leon appeared with Ada on his arm, standing before a
gentleman in clerical robes, who seemed performing the
marriage ceremony. Placing a ring on Ada's third finger,
St. Leon, when the whole was finished, took advantage
of his new relationship, and kissed the lips of the
bride. Amid a storm of applause the curtain dropped,
and as he led the blushing Ada away, he bent down, and
pointing to the ring, whispered, “Wear it until some future
day, when, by replacing it, I shall make you really
my little wife.”

The words were few and lightly spoken, but they touched
the heart of the young Ada, awakening within her thoughts
and feelings of which she never before had dreamed.
Frequently, after that, she met St. Leon, who sometimes
teased her about being his wife; but when he saw how
painfully embarrassed she seemed on such occasions, he
desisted.

The next year he was graduated, and the same day on
which he received the highest honors of his class was long

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remembered with heartfelt sorrow, for ere the city clocks
tolled the hour of midnight, he stood with his orphan
niece, Jenny, weeping over the inanimate form of his sister,
Mrs. Durant, who had died suddenly in a fit of apoplexy.
Mr. Durant had been dead some years, and as
Jenny had now no relatives in New Haven, she accompanied
her uncle to his southern home. Long and passionately
she wept on Ada's bosom, as she bade her farewell,
promising never to forget her, but to write her three
pages of foolscap every week. To do Jenny justice, we
must say that this promise was faithfully kept for a whole
month, and then, with thousands of its sisterhood, it disappeared
into the vale of broken promises and resolutions.

She still wrote occasionally, and at the end of each epistle
there was always a long postscript from Hugh, which
Ada prized almost as much as she did Jenny's whole letter;
and when at last matters changed, the letter becoming
Hugh's and the postscript Jenny's, she made no objection,
even if she felt any. At the time of her father's
failure and death, a long unanswered letter was lying in
her port-folio, which was entirely forgotten until weeks
after, when, in the home which Uncle Israel so disinterestedly
helped them to procure, she and her mother were
sewing for the food which they ate. Then a dozen times
was an answer commenced, blotted with tears, and finally
destroyed, until Ada, burrying her face in her mother's
lap, sobbed out, “Oh, mother, I cannot do it. I cannot
write to tell them how poor we are, for I remember that
Jenny was proud, and laughed at the school-girls whose
fathers were not rich.”

So the letter was never answered, and as St. Leon about
that time started on a tour through Europe, he knew nothing
of their change of circumstances. On his way home,
he had in Paris met with Harry Graham, who had been

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his classmate, and who now won from him a promise that
on his return to America he would visit his parents, in
S —. He did so, and there, as we have seen, met with
Ada Harcourt, whose face, voice, and manner reminded
him so strangely of the Ada he had known years before,
and whom he had never forgotten.

As the reader will have supposed, the sewing woman,
whose daughter Lucy Dayton so heartily despised, was
none other than Mrs. Linwood, of New Haven, who had
taken her husband's first name in order to avoid the persecutions
of Uncle Israel. The day following the party,
St. Leon spent in making inquiries concerning Mrs Harcourt,
and the information thus obtained determined him
to start at once for New Haven, in order to ascertain if
his suspicions were correct.

The result of his journey we already know. Still he resolved
not to make himself known, immediately, but to
wait until he satisfied himself that Ada was as good as
beautiful. And then?

A few more chapters will tell us what then.