had, by personal influence, procured him situations elsewhere, but
between the mother's weakness and the young man's confirmed habits of
idleness, it always ended by Gus saying to his employers:

"I'm going of on a little trip--by-by," at which they gave a sigh of
relief. It had at last become a recognized fact that Gus must marry an
heiress, this being about the only way for so fine a gentleman to
achieve the fortune that he could not stoop to toil for. As he admired
himself complacently in the gilded mirror that ornamented his
dressing-room, he felt that a wise selection would be his only
difficulty, and though an heiress is something of a _rara avis_,
he sternly resolved to cage one with such heavy golden plumage that
even his mother, whom no one satisfied save himself, would give a sigh
of perfect content. When at last he met Edith Allen, it seemed as if
inclination might happily blend with his lofty sense of duty, and he
soon became Edith's devoted and favored attendant. And yet, as we have
seen, our heroine was not the sentimental style of girl that falls
hopelessly and helplessly in love with a man for some occult reason,
not even known to herself, and who mopes and pines till she is
permitted to marry him, be he fool, villain, or saint. Edith was fully
capable of appreciating and weighing her father's words, and under
their influence nearly decided to chill her handsome but helpless
admirer into a mere passing acquaintance; but when he next appeared
before her in his uniform, as an officer in one of the "crack" city
regiments, her eyes, taste, and vanity, and somehow her heart, so
pleaded for him that, so far from being an icicle, she smiled on him
like a July sun.

But whenever he sought to press his suit into something definite, she
evaded and shunned the point, as only a feminine diplomatist can. In