was a man, and so, manlike, he hugged the skeleton which he in part had dragged into his home, and petted it, and kept it constantly in sight, instead of thrusting it out from the chamber of his heart, and barring the door against it.  Frank’s name was never mentioned between them, but Richard fancied that always after the receipt of Mrs. Dr. Van Buren’s letters Ethelyn was a little sad, and more disposed to find fault with him, and he sometimes wished Mrs. Dr. Van Buren might never write to them again.  There was one of her letters awaiting Ethelyn after her return from Minnesota, and she read it standing under the chandelier, with Richard lying upon the couch near by, watching her curiously.  There was something in the letter which disturbed her evidently, for her face flushed, and her lips shut firmly together, as they usually did when she was agitated.  Richard already read Aunt Barbara’s letters, and heretofore he had been welcome to Mrs. Van Buren’s, a privilege of which he seldom availed himself, for he found nothing interesting in her talk of parties, and operas and fashions, and the last new color of dress goods, and style of wearing the hair.

“It was too much twaddle for him,” he had said in reply to Ethelyn’s questions as to whether he would like to see what Aunt Van Buren had written.

Now, however, she did not offer to show him the letter, but crumpled it nervously in her pocket, and going to her piano, began to play dashingly, rapidly, as was her custom when excited.  She did not know that Richard was listening to her, much less watching her, as he lay in the shadow, wondering what that letter contained, and wishing so much that he knew.  Ethelyn was tired that night, and after the first heat of her excitement had been thrown off in a spirited schottische, she closed her piano, and coming to the couch where Richard was lying, sat down by his side, and after waiting a moment in silence, asked “of what he was thinking.”

There was something peculiar in the tone of her voice—­something almost beseeching, as if she either wanted sympathy, or encouragement for the performance of some good act.  But Richard did not so understand her.  He was, to tell the truth, a very little cross, as men, and women, too, are apt to be when tired with sight-seeing and dissipation.  He had been away from his business three whole weeks, traveling with a party for not one member of which, with the exception of his wife, Melinda, Marcia, and Ella, did he care a straw.

Hotel life at St. Paul he regarded as a bore, second only to life at Saratoga.  The falls of Minnehaha “was a very pretty little stream,” he thought, but what people could see about it go into such ecstasies as Ethelyn, and even Melinda did, he could not tell.  Perhaps if Harry Clifford had not formed a part of every scene where Ethelyn was the prominent figure, he might have judged differently.  But Harry had been greatly in his way, and Richard did not like it any more than he liked Ethelyn’s