judgment, your advice, are paramount with, him as to all matters of
outlay; and, Evelyn, suffer me to speak to you on one subject of great
delicacy--sister! I must. Whenever you marry from this house, understand
well that you shall not go empty-handed."

"Fortune is not _his_ to bestow," she responded, "and large charities
have absorbed, I know, much of his yearly income, princely as that is.
Besides, he reinvests all that remains from that source for Mabel, as I
know. I feel assured he will provide for me, but it must be in a very
small way, and I must go to England and make my establishment there."

"Would you marry for money, Evelyn?" I asked gravely. "O sister, can you
conceive of no higher happiness than this?"

"I can," she said with emotion, while her lips blanched to the hue of
ashes. "I have dreamed such a dream in days past, but now the dark
reality alone remains and sweeps all before it. I shall embrace my first
eligible offer regardless of feeling, and I prefer to cast my destiny
with my own people, however estranged they may be. Certainly, this
letter is not very affectionate, nor even a courteous one from so near a
relative," and she placed in my hand the cold and supercilious note of
the Earl of Pomfret, containing a permission to visit his castle, rather
than invitation.

"Yet you will go, Evelyn?"

"Miriam, I _must_ go. I should go mad were I to stay here, or die in the
struggle."

"Sister, what can this be? Evelyn, hear me: I swear to you, on the day