Meantime, Mr. Frank Tracy had resumed his seat, and, with his hands clasped together over his head, was wondering what effect his brother’s return would have upon him.  Would he be obliged to leave the park, and the luxury he had enjoyed so long, and go back to the old life which he hated so much.

‘No; Arthur will never be so mean,’ he said.  ’He has always shown himself generous, and will continue to do so.  Besides that, he will want somebody to keep his house for him, unless—­’ and here the perspiration started from every pore, as Frank Tracy thought:  ’What if he is married, and the us in his telegram means a wife, instead of a friend or servant, as I imagined!’

This would indeed be a calamity, for then his own and Dolly’s reign was over at Tracy Park, and the party they were to give that night to at least three hundred people would be their last grand blow-out.

‘Confound the party!’ he thought, as he arose from his chair and began to pace the room.  ’Arthur won’t like that as a greeting after eleven years’ absence.  He never fancied being cheek by jowl with Tom, Dick and Harry; and that is just what the smash is to-night.  Dolly wants to please everybody, thinking to get me votes for Congress, and so she has invited all creation and his wife.  There’s old Peterkin, the roughest kind of a canal bummer when Arthur went away.  Think of my fastidious brother shaking hands with him and Widow Shipley, who kept a low tavern on the tow-path!  She’ll be there; in her silks and long gold chain, for she has four boys, all voters, who call me Frank and slap me on the shoulder.  Ugh! even I hate it all; and in a most perturbed state of mind, the Hon. Frank and would-be Congressman continued to walk the room lamenting the party which must be, and wondering what his aristocratic brother would say to such a crowd in his house on the night of his return.

And if there should be a Mrs. Arthur Tracy, with possibly some little Tracys!  But that idea was too horrible to contemplate, and so he tried to put it from his mind, and to be as calm and quiet as possible until lunch-time, when, with no very great amount of alacrity and cheerfulness, he started for home, where, as he had been warned by his wife when he left her in the morning, ’he was to lunch standing up or anyhow, as she had no time for parade that day.’

CHAPTER II.

Arthur Tracy.

Although it was a morning in October, the grass in the park was as green as in early June, while the flowers in the beds and borders, the geraniums, the phlox, the stocks, and verbenas were handsomer, if possible, than they had been in the summer-time:  for the rain, which had fallen almost continually during the month of September, had kept them fresh and bright.  Here and there the scarlet and golden tints of autumn were beginning to show on the trees; but this only added a new charm to a place which was noted for its beauty, and was the pride and admiration of the town.