CHAPTER III.

WILFORD CAMERON.


The day succeeding Katy Lennox's return to Silverton was rainy and cold
for the season, the storm extending as far westward as the city of New
York, and making Wilford Cameron shiver as he stepped from the Hudson
River cars into the carriage waiting for him, first greeting pleasantly
the white-gloved driver, who, carefully closing the carriage door,
mounted to his seat and drove his handsome bays in the direction of
No. ---- Fifth Avenue. And Wilford, leaning back among the yielding
cushions, thought how pleasant it was to be going home again, feeling
glad, as he frequently did, that the home to which he was going was in
every particular unexceptionable. The Camerons he knew were an old and
highly respectable family, while it was his mother's pride that, go back
as far as one might on either side, there could not be found a single
blemish or a member of whom to be ashamed. On the Cameron side there were
millionaires, merchant princes, bankers and stockholders, professors and
scholars, while on hers, the Rossiter side, there were LL.D.'s and
D.D.'s, lawyers and clergymen, authors and artists, beauties and belles,
the whole forming an illustrious line of ancestry, admirably represented
and sustained by the present family of Camerons, occupying the
brownstone front, corner of ---- Street and Fifth Avenue, where the
handsome carriage stopped and a tall figure ran quickly up the marble
steps. There was a soft rustle of silk, an odor of delicate perfume,
and from the luxurious chair before the fire kindled in the grate an
elderly lady arose and advanced a step or two toward the parlor door. In
another moment she was kissing the young man bending over her and