admired beauty, and liked to have pretty things around him.

To tell the truth, he was sadly in need of money. It was fortunate that
his old friend, Mr. Harrison, Margie's dead father, had taken it into his
head to plight his daughter's troth to him while she was yet a child. Mr.
Harrison had been an eccentric man; and from the fact that in many points
of religious belief he and Mr. Paul Linmere agreed, (for both were
miserable skeptics,) he valued him above all other men, and thought his
daughter's happiness would be secured by the union he had planned.

Linmere had been abroad several years, and had led a very reckless,
dissipated life. Luxurious by nature, lacking in moral rectitude, and
having wealth at his command, he indulged himself unrestrained; and when
at last he left the gay French capital and returned to America, his whole
fortune, with exception of a few thousands, was dissipated. So he needed
a rich wife sorely, and was not disposed to defer his happiness.

He met Margie with _empressement_, and bowed his tall head to kiss the
white hand she extended to him. She drew it away coldly--something about
the man made her shrink from him.

"I am so happy to meet you again. Margie, and after ten years of
separation! I have thought so much and so often of you."

"Thank you, Mr. Linmere."

"Will you not call me Paul?" he asked, in a subdued voice, letting his
dangerous eyes, full of light and softness, rest on her.

An expression of haughty surprise swept her face. She drew back a pace.