the pomps and vanities, they did not do so, instead of acting more stuck
up than ever. Inconsistency was the underlying strata of the whole
Episcopal Church, he said, and as Lucy, without taking any public step,
had still declared her preference for that church, he, too, in a
measure, charged her propensity for repairs to the same source with Aunt
Betsy; but, as he could really see no sin in what she did, he suffered
her in most things to have her way. But when she contemplated an attack
upon the huge chimney occupying the center of the building, he
interfered; for there was nothing he liked better than the bright fire
on the hearth when the evenings grew chilly and long, and the autumn
rain was falling upon the roof. The chimney should stand, he said; and
as no amount of coaxing could prevail on him to revoke his decision, the
chimney stood, and with it the three fireplaces, where, in the fall and
spring, were burned the twisted knots too bulky for the kitchen stove.
This was fourteen years ago, and in that lapse of time Lucy Lennox had
gradually fallen in with the family ways of living, and ceased to talk
of her cottage in Western New York, where her husband had died and where
were born her daughters, one of whom she was expecting home on the warm
July day when our story opens.

Kate, or Katy Lennox, our heroine, had been for a year an inmate of
Canandaigua Seminary, whither she was sent at the expense of a distant
relative to whom her father had been guardian, and who, during her
infancy, had also had a home with Uncle Ephraim, her mother having
brought her with her when, after her husband's death, she returned to
Silverton. Dr. Morris Grant he was now, and he had just come home from a
three years' sojourn in Paris, and was living in his own handsome
dwelling across the fields toward Silverton village, and half a mile or
more from Uncle Ephraim's farmhouse. He had written from Paris, offering
to send his cousins, Helen and Kate, to any school their mother might