Grande, a lawyer of wealth and distinction.

Of immediate French descent, Judge Le Grande possessed in an eminent
degree the peculiarities of his gay, volatile ancestry. Proud of his
children, and ambitious for their future, in his lavish bounty he
withheld nothing he deemed necessary for their advancement in life.

Thus at eighteen, Helen Le Grande looked out upon life's opening sky
as thoughtlessly as she would look upon the bright waters of the
blue harbor that stretched before her father's mansion, where sky
and water blended in a peaceful, azure expanse, little heeding or
caring whether storms came, or sunshine rested on the deep. Bertha
Levy, the little darked-eyed Jewess who stood by her side under the
stone archway, was nothing more or less than a piquant little
maiden, just turned seventeen, of amiable disposition and
affectionate heart, but by no means partial to study, and always
ready to glean surreptitiously from her books, any scraps of the
lesson that might be useful, either to herself or her friends, in
the ordeal of recitation.

Bertha's mother was a widow, whose circumstances allowed her
children all the comforts and even many luxuries of life. She had
reared them most rigidly in Hebrew faith. Lizzie Girardeau
Heartwell, the next in the fair tableau, was the only member of the
group who was not a native of the Queen City. It is no misstatement
of fact to say that she was, indeed, the ruling spirit of Madam
Truxton's entire school.

Dr. Heartwell, Lizzie's father, had lived in a distant State, and
died when she was but a tender child. Her mother, a descendant of