and princes of other times had contributed to embellish.

"My husband," Mrs. Strange went on, "bought this house for me, and let me
furnish it after my own fancy. After it was all done we neither of us
liked it, and when he died I felt as if he had left me in a tomb here."

"Eveleth," said her mother, "you ought not to speak so before Mr. Homos.
He will not know what to think of you, and he will go back to Altruria
with a very wrong idea of American women."

At this protest, Mrs. Strange seemed to recover herself a little. "Yes,"
she said, "you must excuse me. I have no right to speak so. But one is
often much franker with foreigners than with one's own kind, and,
besides, there is something--I don't know what--that will not let me keep
the truth from you."

She gazed at me entreatingly, and then, as if some strong emotion swept
her from her own hold, she broke out:

"He thought he would make some sort of atonement to me, as if I owed none
to him! His money was all he had to do it with, and he spent that upon me
in every way he could think of, though he knew that money could not buy
anything that was really good, and that, if it bought anything beautiful,
it uglified it with the sense of cost to every one who could value it in
dollars and cents. He was a good man, far better than people ever
imagined, and very simple-hearted and honest, like a child, in his
contrition for his wealth, which he did not dare to get rid of; and
though I know that, if he were to come back, it would be just as it was,
his memory is as dear to me as if--"