Looking up, he met Mary Howard’s large, dark eyes fixed rather inquiringly upon him.  She was accompanied by one of Mr. Selden’s servants, and he felt sure she was going to visit her sister.  Of course, Ella would tell her all, and what must Mary think of one who could so soon repeat his vows of love to another?  In all the world there was not an individual for whose good opinion Henry Lincoln cared one half so much as for Mary Howard’s; and the thought that he should now surely lose it maddened him.  The resolution of the morning was forgotten, and that night a fond father watched and wept over his inebriate son, for never before had Henry Lincoln been so beastly intoxicated.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE SHADOWS DEEPEN.

From one of the luxuriously furnished chambers of her father’s elegant mansion, Jenny Lincoln looked mournfully out upon the thick angry clouds, which, the livelong day, had obscured the winter sky.  Dreamily for a while she listened to the patter of the rain as it fell upon the deserted pavement below, and then, with a long, deep sigh, she turned away and wept.  Poor Jenny!—­the day was rainy, and dark, and dreary, but darker far were the shadows stealing over her pathway.  Turn which way she would, there was not one ray of sunshine, which even her buoyant spirits could gather from the surrounding gloom.  Her only sister was slowly, but surely dying, and when Jenny thought of this she felt that if Rose could only live, she’d try and bear the rest; try to forget how much she loved William Bender, who that morning had honorably and manfully asked her of her parents, and been spurned with contempt,—­not by her father, for could he have followed the dictates of his better judgment, he would willingly have given his daughter to the care of one who he knew would carefully shield her from the storms of life.  It was not he, but the cold, proud mother, who so haughtily refused William’s request, accusing him of taking underhanded means to win her daughter’s affections.

“I had rather see you dead!” said the stony-hearted woman, when Jenny knelt at her feet, and pleaded for her to take back the words she had spoken—­“I had rather see you dead, than married to such as he.  I mean what I have said, and you will never be his.”

Jenny knew William too well to think he would ever sanction an act of disobedience to her mother, and her heart grew faint, and her eyes dim with tears, as she thought of conquering the love which had grown with her growth, and strengthened with her strength.  There was another reason, too, why Jenny should weep as she sat there alone in her room.  From her father she had heard of all that was to happen.  The luxuries to which all her life she had been accustomed, were to be hers no longer.  The pleasant country house in Chicopee, dearer far than her city home, must be sold, and nowhere in the wide world, was there a place for them to rest.