role of the grand gentleman to perfection.

Dinner parties and card parties, where it was said the play was for
money, and where Arthur always allowed himself to lose and his friends
to win; races and hunts were of frequent occurrence at Tracy Park,
where matters generally were managed on a magnificent scale, and created
a great deal of talk among the plain folks of Shannondale, whose only
dissipation then was going to church twice on Sunday and to the cattle
show once each year.

Few ladies ever graced these festivities, for Arthur was very
aristocratic in his feelings, and with two or three exceptions, held
himself aloof from the people of Shannondale. It was said, however, that
sometimes, when he and his friend were alone, there was the sweep of a
white dress and the gleam of golden hair in the parlor, where sweet Amy
Crawford, daughter of the housekeeper, played and sang her simple
ballads to the two gentlemen, who always treated her with as much
deference as if she had been a queen, instead of a poor young girl
dependent for her bread upon her own and her mother's exertions. But
beyond the singing in the twilight Amy never advanced, and so far as her
mother knew she had never for a single instant been alone with either of
the gentlemen. How, then, was the household electrified one morning when
it was found that Amy had fled, and that Harold Hastings was the
companion of her flight?

'I wanted to tell you,' Amy wrote to her mother in the note left on
her dressing table. 'I wanted to tell you and be married at home,
but Mr. Hastings would not allow it. It would create trouble, he
said, between himself and Mr. Tracy, who I may confess to you in
confidence, asked me twice to be his wife, and when I refused,