identity. Strange to say, until this moment she had scarcely given a
thought to her brother's wife; and to find herself sitting in her own
genteel little parlor, behind her own tea-service, with her hand upon her
own teapot, hearing that this wife had been a young person who had been
"a great favorite" upon the stage, in a region peopled, as she had been
led to suppose, by gold-diggers and escaped convicts, was almost too much
for her to support herself under. But she did support herself bravely,
when she had time to rally.

"Help yourself to some fowl, my dear," she said hospitably, even though
very faintly indeed, "and take a muffin."

Octavia did so, her over-splendid hands flashing in the light as she
moved them.

"American girls always have more things than English girls," she
observed, with admirable coolness. "They dress more. I have been told so
by girls who have been in Europe. And I have more things than most
American girls. Father had more money than most people; that was one
reason; and he spoiled me, I suppose. He had no one else to give things
to, and he said I should have every thing I took a fancy to. He often
laughed at me for buying things, but he never said I shouldn't buy them."

"He was always generous," sighed Miss Belinda. "Poor, dear Martin!"

Octavia scarcely entered into the spirit of this mournful sympathy. She
was fond of her father, but her recollections of him were not pathetic or
sentimental.

"He took me with him wherever he went," she proceeded. "And we had a