At last, unknown to them, an elder brother undertook to solve the problem.  He was a thorough man of the world, and his scrupulous compliance with the requirements of fashionable society led his mother to regard him as a model of propriety.  In his private, hidden life he was as unscrupulous as the ultra fashionable often are.

“Vinton,” he said one day, “what a fool you are making of yourself in this affair!  You have been brought up like a girl, and you are more simple and innocent than they average.  I’ve seen your charmer, and I admit that she is a fine creature.  As far as looks go, you show as much judgment as any man in town, but there your wits desert you.  Girls in her position are not nice as to terms when they can greatly better themselves.  You have money enough to lodge her like a princess compared with her present condition.  Verbum sat sapienti.”

Vinton replied indignantly that he knew nothing about Mildred.

“Oh, I know all about women,” was the confident reply; “have forgotten more than you ever knew.”

Nevertheless this thought, like an evil seed, sprang up into a speedy but not rank growth.  Arnold saw that his family would regard his marriage as an outrage which they would resent in every possible way, and that their hostility now was but an ill-concealed, smouldering fire.  The relation to him would not be what his brother suggested, but as sacred and binding as marriage.  His unhealthful reading, his long years abroad, and the radical weakness of his nature prepared him to accept this solution as the easiest and best that circumstances permitted of.  He justly doubted whether he would soon, if ever, gain the power of being independent.  He knew nothing of business, and hated its turmoil and distractions, and while for Mildred’s sake he would attempt anything and suffer anything, he had all the unconquerable shrinking from a manful push out into the world which a timid man feels at the prospect of a battle.  He had been systematically trained into weakness, and he felt that men, when he came to compete with them, would discover and take advantage of his defects.  His cold, haughty reticence was but disguised timidity.  In Mildred’s presence he ever showed the best side of his nature, and his lonely, repressed life had always touched the tenderest chords of her heart.  If their love had been smiled upon from the first, how different would have been his fate!  She would have tenderly developed his dwarfed, crushed manhood, and the result would have been happiness for them both.

“Millie,” said Arnold, one starlight night, “do you care very much for the world’s opinions?” They were sitting on the platform above the old mansion.  The German astronomer, after grumbling awhile at an obscuring haze, had gone downstairs in disgust, and left the lovers to themselves.

“No, Vinton, I never cared much for the world at any time, and now I have an almost morbid impulse to shrink from it altogether.  I’m like my dear mamma.  Home was her world.  Poor, dear mamma!” and she buried her face on his shoulder and shed tears that his presence robbed of much of their bitterness.