THE LOVERS.





_IRENE DELANCY_ was a girl of quick, strong feelings, and an
undisciplined will. Her mother died before she reached her tenth
year. From that time she was either at home under the care of
domestics, or within the scarcely more favorable surroundings of a
boarding-school. She grew up beautiful and accomplished, but
capricious and with a natural impatience of control, that unwise
reactions on the part of those who attempted to govern her in no
degree tempered.

Hartley Emerson, as a boy, was self-willed and passionate, but
possessed many fine qualities. A weak mother yielded to his resolute
struggles to have his own way, and so he acquired, at an early age,
control over his own movements. He went to college, studied hard,
because he was ambitious, and graduated with honor. Law he chose as
a profession; and, in order to secure the highest advantages,
entered the office of a distinguished attorney in the city of New
York, and gave to its study the best efforts of a clear, acute and
logical mind. Self-reliant, proud, and in the habit of reaching his
ends by the nearest ways, he took his place at the bar with a
promise of success rarely exceeded. From his widowed mother, who
died before he reached his majority, Hartley Emerson inherited a
moderate fortune with which to begin the world. Few young men
started forward on their life-journey with so small a number of
vices, or with so spotless a moral character. The fine intellectual