the unfurnished rooms in her vacant heart and soul places.

Miss Lawrence turned from the window, and trailed her long silken
train across the rich carpet, seating herself before the open
fireplace. It was an appropriate time and situation for a maiden's
tender dreams; only a few hours had passed since the handsomest and
most brilliant young man in that thriving eastern town had asked her
to be his wife, and placed the kiss of betrothal upon her virgin
lips. Yet it was with a sense of triumph and relief, rather than
with tenderness and rapture, that the young woman meditated upon the
situation--triumph over other women who had shown a decided interest
in Mr Cheney, since his arrival in the place more than eighteen
months ago, and relief that the dreaded role of spinster was not to
be her part in life's drama.

Miss Lawrence was twenty-six--one year older than her fiance; and she
had never received a proposal of marriage or listened to a word of
love in her life before. Let me transpose that phrase--she had never
before received a proposal of marriage, and had never in her life
listened to a word of love; for Preston had not spoken of love. She
knew that he did not love her. She knew that he had sought her hand
wholly from ambitious motives. She was the daughter of the Hon.
Sylvester Lawrence, lawyer, judge, state senator, and proposed
candidate for lieutenant-governor in the coming campaign. She was
the only heir to his large fortune.

Preston Cheney was a penniless young man from the West. A self-made
youth, with an unusual brain and an overwhelming ambition, he had
risen from chore boy on a western farm to printer's apprentice in a
small town, thence to reporter, city editor, foreign correspondent,