as she gazed fondly upon the beautiful face before her, with its exalted
look of wrapt devotion, a fierce pain struggled at her heart, for she
thought of the time in the not distant future, when her only one would
be motherless.

One little year ago she had been the imperious woman of fashion, and
Clemence had seemed little more than a child, in spite of the seventeen
summers that had smiled upon her young head. Indeed, she had often
experienced a feeling akin to contempt at the unworldliness of her
daughter, and sighed in secret to see Clemence just as agreeable to Carl
Alwyn, the poor but talented artist, as she was to young Reginald
Germaine, the heir to half a million.

"Just like your father, my dear," she would say, scornfully, "and nobody
knows what I have suffered from his low notions. Just to think of his
always insisting upon my inviting those frightful Dinsmore's to my
exclusive entertainments, because, years before you were born, Mr.
Dinsmore's father did him some service. Why can't he pay them for it,
and have an end of it? It is perfectly shocking! The idea of bringing
_me_, a Leveridge of Leveridge, into contact with such vulgar people."

"Mamma!" and Clemence's fine eyes glow with generous indignation, "how
_can_ you speak thus of one of the noblest traits of my father's
character? I love and honor him for it, and I ask God daily to make me
worthy to be the child of such a parent."

"Well, my dear," cooly replies mamma, "if it will afford you any
satisfaction to hear it, you resemble him in every respect. In fact, I
see more plainly every day, there is not a trait of the Leveridge's
about you, deeply as I deplore it. I had hoped to have a daughter after