usually overtook such affairs in the feverish haste of the early days.
It caused her to remove to Santa Ana, where her old father had feebly
ranched a "quarter section" in the valley. He survived her husband
only a few months, leaving her the property, and once more in mourning.
Perhaps this continuity of woe endeared her to a neighborhood where
distinctive ravages of diphtheria or scarlet fever gave a kind of social
preeminence to any household, and she was so sympathetically assisted by
her neighbors in the management of the ranch that, from an unkempt
and wasteful wilderness, it became paying property. The slim, willowy
figure, soft red-lidded eyes, and deep crape of "Sister Wade" at church
or prayer-meeting was grateful to the soul of these gloomy worshipers,
and in time she herself found that the arm of these dyspeptics of mind
and body was nevertheless strong and sustaining. Small wonder that she
should hesitate to-night about plunging into inconsistent, even though
trifling, frivolities.

But apart from this superficial reason, there was another instinctive
one deep down in the recesses of Mrs. Wade's timid heart which she had
kept to herself, and indeed would have tearfully resented had it been
offered by another. The late Mr. Wade had been, in fact, a singular
example of this kind of frivolous existence carried to a man-like
excess. Besides being a patron of amusements, Mr. Wade gambled, raced,
and drank. He was often home late, and sometimes not at all. Not that
this conduct was exceptional in the "roaring days" of Heavy Tree Hill,
but it had given Mrs. Wade perhaps an undue preference for a less
certain, even if a more serious life. His tragic death was, of course,
a kind of martyrdom, which exalted him in the feminine mind to a saintly
memory; yet Mrs. Wade was not without a certain relief in that. It
was voiced, perhaps crudely, by the widow of Abner Drake in a visit of
condolence to the tearful Mrs. Wade a few days after Wade's death. "It's