Arthur was scholarly in his tastes, quiet and gentlemanly in his manners, with a musical voice which won him friends at once, while in his soft black eyes there was a peculiar look of sadness, as if he were brooding over something which filled him with regret.  Frank was very proud of his brother, and with Dorothy felt that he was honored when, six months after their marriage, he came for a day or so to visit them, and with him his intimate friend Harold Hastings, an Englishman by birth, but so thoroughly Americanized as to pass unchallenged for a native.  There was a band of crape on Arthur’s hat, and his manner was like one trying to be sorry, while conscious of a great inward feeling of resignation, if not content.  The rich uncle was dead.  He had died suddenly in Paris, where he had gone on business, and the whole of his vast fortune was left to his nephew Arthur—­not a farthing to Frank, not even the mention of his name in the will:  and when Dorothy heard it she put her white apron over her face, and cried as if her heart would break.  They were so poor, she and Frank, and they wanted so many things, and the man who could have helped them was dead and had left them nothing.  It was hard, and she might not have made the young heir very welcome if he had not ensured her that he should do something for her husband.  And he kept his word, and in course of time bought out a grocery in Langley and put Frank in it, and paid the mortgage on his house, and gave him a thousand dollars, and invited them for a few days to visit him; and then it would seem as if he forgot them entirely; for with his friend Harold he settled himself at Tracy Park, and played the role of the grand gentleman to perfection.

Dinner parties and card parties, where it was said the play was for money, and where Arthur always allowed himself to lose and his friends to win; races and hunts were of frequent occurrence at Tracy Park, where matters generally were managed on a magnificent scale, and created a great deal of talk among the plain folks of Shannondale, whose only dissipation then was going to church twice on Sunday and to the cattle show once each year.

Few ladies ever graced these festivities, for Arthur was very aristocratic in his feelings, and with two or three exceptions, held himself aloof from the people of Shannondale.  It was said, however, that sometimes, when he and his friend were alone, there was the sweep of a white dress and the gleam of golden hair in the parlor, where sweet Amy Crawford, daughter of the housekeeper, played and sang her simple ballads to the two gentlemen, who always treated her with as much deference as if she had been a queen, instead of a poor young girl dependent for her bread upon her own and her mother’s exertions.  But beyond the singing in the twilight Amy never advanced, and so far as her mother knew she had never for a single instant been alone with either of the gentlemen.  How, then, was the household electrified one morning when it was found that Amy had fled, and that Harold Hastings was the companion of her flight?