He was a man of fine moral and intellectual qualities.  His wealth gave him leisure, and his tastes, feelings and habits of thought drew him into the society of some of the best men in the city where he lived—­best in the true meaning of that word.  In all enlightened social reform movements you would be sure of finding Mr. Howard Dinneford.  He was an active and efficient member in many boards of public charity, and highly esteemed in them all for his enlightened philanthropy and sound judgment.  Everywhere but at home he was strong and influential; there he was weak, submissive and of little account.  He had long ago accepted the situation, making a virtue of necessity.  A different man—­one of stronger will and a more imperious spirit—­would have held his own, even though it wrought bitterness and sorrow.  But Mr. Dinneford’s aversion to strife, and gentleness toward every one, held him away from conflict, and so his home was at least tranquil.

Mrs. Dinneford had her own way, and so long as her husband made no strong opposition to that way all was peaceful.

For Edith, their only child, who was more like her father than her mother, Mr. Dinneford had the tenderest regard.  The well-springs of love, choked up so soon after his marriage, were opened freely toward his daughter, and he lived in her a new, sweet and satisfying life.  The mother was often jealous of her husband’s demonstrative tenderness for Edith.  A yearning instinct of womanhood, long repressed by worldliness and a mean social ambition, made her crave at times the love she had cast away, and then her cup of life was very bitter.  But fear of Mr. Dinneford’s influence over Edith was stronger than any jealousy of his love.  She had high views for her daughter.  In her own marriage she had set aside all considerations but those of social rank.  She had made it a stepping-stone to a higher place in society than the one to which she was born.  Still, above them stood many millionnaire families, living in palace-homes, and through her daughter she meant to rise into one of them.  It mattered not for the personal quality of the scion of the house; he might be as coarse and common as his father before him, or weak, mean, selfish, and debased by sensual indulgence.  This was of little account.  To lift Edith to the higher social level was the all in all of Mrs. Dinneford’s ambition.

But Mr. Dinneford taught Edith a nobler life-lesson than this, gave her better views of wedlock, pictured for her loving heart the bliss of a true marriage, sighing often as he did so, but unconsciously, at the lost fruition of his own sweet hopes.  He was careful to do this only when alone with Edith, guarding his speech when Mrs. Dinneford was present.  He had faith in true principles, and with these he sought to guard her life.  He knew that she would be pushed forward into society, and knew but too well that one so pure and lovely in mind as well as person would become a centre of attraction, and that he, standing on the outside as it were, would have no power to save her from the saddest of all fates if she were passive and her mother resolute.  Her safety must lie in herself.