"Yes," said Mr. Van Arsdel, regarding me curiously, “I should call that a good beginning."

"Well," rejoined I, "my health, my education, my power of doing literary work, are this capital. They secure to me for the next year an income equal to that of seventy thousand dollars at ten per cent. Now, I think a capital of that amount invested in a man, is quite as safe as the same sum invested in any stocks what

ever.

It seems to me that in our country a man who knows how to take care of his health is less likely to become unproductive in income than any stock you can name.'

"There is something in that, I admit," replied Mr. Van Arsdel. "And there's something in this, too, papa," said Eva, who entered at this moment and could not resist her desire to dip her oar in the current of conversation, "and that is, that an investment that you have got to take for better or worse and can't sell or get rid of all your life, had better be made in something you are sure you will like."

"And you are sure of that in this case, Pussy?" said her father, pinching her cheek.

Tolerably, as men go. Mr. Henderson is the least tiresome man of my acquaintance, and you know, papa, it's time I took somebody; you don't want me to go into a convent, do you?" "How about poor Mr. Sydney?"

"Poor Mr. Sydney has just called, and I have invited him to a private audience and convinced him that I am not, in the least, the person to make him happy-and he is one of the sort that feel that it is of the last importance that he should be made happy."

66

Well, well! Mr. Henderson, I presume you have seen, in the course of your observations, that this is one of the houses where the women rule. You and Eva will have to settle it with her mother."

"Then I am to understand," exclaimed I, "that, as far as you are concerned

!"

"I submit," said Mr. Van Arsdel.

"The ayes have it, then," said Eva.

"I'm not so sure of that, young lady," said Mr. Van Arsdel, "if I may judge by the way your mother lamented to me last night." "Oh, that's all Aunt Maria! You see, papa, this is an age of revolution, and there's going to be a revolution in the Aunt Maria dynasty in our house. She has governed mamma and all the rest of us long enough, and now she must go down and I must rule. Harry and I are going to start a new era, and have things all our own way. I'm going to crown him king, and then he will crown me queen, and then we shall proceed to rule and reign in our own dominions, and Aunt Maria, and Mrs. Grundy, and all the rest of

them may help themselves; they can't hinder us. We shall be happy in our own way without consulting them."

"Well, well!" said Mr. Van Arsdel, following with an amused eye a pirouette Eva executed at the conclusion of her speech, “you young folks are venturesome."

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'Yes, papa, I am The woman who dared," said Eva.

"Nothing venture, nothing have,'" quoted I.

"Eva knows no more about managing money than a this year's robin," said her father.

"Yet this year's robins know how to build respectable nests when their time comes," said she. "They don't bother about investments and stocks and all those things, but sing and have a good time. It all comes right for them, and I don't doubt it will for us."

"You have a decided talent for spending money most agreeably, I confess," said Mr. Van Arsdel.

"Now, papa, it's too bad for you to be running down your own daughter! I'm not appreciated. I have a world of undeveloped genius for management. Harry has agreed to teach me accounts; and as I belong to the class who always grow wiser than their teachers, I'm sure that before six months are over I shall be able to suggest improved methods to him. When I get a house you'll all be glad to come and see me, I shall make it so bright and sunny and funny, and give you such lovely things to eat; and in my house everybody shall do just as they please, and have their own way if they can find out what it is. I know people will like it."

"I believe you, Pussy," said Mr. Van Arsdel; " but houses don't grow on bushes, you know."

"Well, haven't I six thousand dollars, all my own, that grandma left me?"

"And how much of a house do you think that would buy?" Perhaps as big a one as you and mother began in."

"You never would be satisfied with such a house as we began in." 'Why not? Are we any better than you were?"

"No. But now-a-days no young folks are contented to do as we did."

"Then papa, you are going to a see a new thing upon the earth, for Harry and I am going to be pattern folks for being rational and contented. We are going to start out on a new tack and bring in the golden age. But, bless me! there's Aunt Maria coming down the street! Now, Harry, comes the tug of war. I am going now to emancipate mamma, and proclaim the new order of things," and out she flitted.

"Mr. Henderson," said Mr. Van Arsdel, when she had gone, "I think it is about certain that I am to look on you as a future

member of our family. I'll be fair with you, that you may take steps with your eyes. My daughters are supposed to be heiresses, but as thing are tending, in a very short time I may be put back to where I started in life and have all to begin over. My girls will have nothing. I see such a crisis impending and I have no power to help it."

"My dear sir," said I, "while I shall be sorry for your trouble, and hope it may not come, I shall only be too glad to prove my devotion to Eva."

"It is evident," said Mr. Van Arsdel, "that her heart is set on you, and, after all, the only true comfort is in having the one you want. I myself never cared for fashion, Mr. Henderson, nor parties, nor any of this kind of fuss and show the women think so much of; and I believe that Eva is a little like me. I like to go back to the old place in summer and eat huckleberries and milk, and see the cows come home from pasture, and sit in father's old arm-chair. It wouldn't take so much running and scheming and hard thinking and care to live, if folks were all of my mind. Why, up in New Hampshire where I came from, there's scarcely ever an estate administered upon that figures up more than five thousand dollars,. and yet they all live well-have nice houses, nice tables, give money in charity, and make a good thing of life."

There was something really quite pathetic in this burst of confi dence from the worthy man. Perhaps I was the first one to whom he had confessed the secret apprehensions with which he was struggling.

"You see, Mr. Henderson, you never can tell about investments.. Stocks that seem to stand as firm as the foundations of the earth, that the very oldest and shrewdest and longest-headed put into, run down and depreciate-and when they get running, you can't draw out, you see. Now I advanced capital for the new Lightning Line Railroad to the amount of two hundred thousand, and pledged my Guatemala stock for the money, and then arose this combination against the Guatemala stock, and it has fallen to a fourth of its value in six months, and it takes heavy rowing-heavy. I'd a great deal rather be in father's old place, with an estate of five thousand dollars, and read my newspaper in peace, than to have all I have with the misery of managing it. I may work out and I may not."

CHAPTER XXXIX-ACCEPTED AND ENGAGED.

And so at last I was accepted, and my engagement with Eva was. recognised as a fait accompli.

In the family of my betrothed were all shades of acquiescence. Mrs. Van Arsdel was pensively resigned to me as a mysterious dis

pensation of Providence. Mr. Van Arsdel, though not in any way demonstrative, showed an evident disposition to enter into confidential relations with me. Ida was whole-hearted and cordial; and Alice, after a little reconnoitering, joined our party as a gay, generous young girl, naturally disposed to make the best of things, and favourably inclined toward the interests of young lovers.

Mr. Trollope, in The Small House at Allington, represents a young man just engaged as feeling himself in the awkward position of a captive led out in triumph, for exhibition. The lady and her friends are spoken of as marching him forth with complacency, like a prize ox with ribbons in his horns, unable to repress the exhibition of their delight in having entrapped him. One would infer from this picture of life such a scarcity of marriageable men that the capture even of such game as young Crosbie, who is represented to be an untitled young man, without fortune or principle, is an occasion of triumph.

In our latitudes, we of the stronger sex are not taught to regard ourselves as such overpoweringly delightful acquisitions, and the declaration of an engagement is not with us regarded as evidence of a lady's skill in hunting. I did not, as young Crosbie is said to have done, feel myself somehow caught. On the contrary, I was lost in wonder at my good fortune. If I had found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, or dug up the buried treasures of Captain Kidd, I could not have seemed to myself more as one who dreamed.

I wrote all about it to my mother, who, if she judged by my letters, must have believed "Hesperian fables" true for the first time in the world, and that a woman had been specially made and created out of all impossible and fabulous elements of joy. The child-wife of my early days, the dream-wife of my youth, were both living, moving, breathing in this wonderful reality. I tried to disguise my good fortune-to walk soberly and behave myself among men as if I were sensible and rational, and not dazed and enchanted. I felt myself orbed in a magical circle, out of which I looked pityingly on everybody that was not I. A spirit of universal match-making benevolence possessed me. I wanted everybody I liked to be engaged. I pitied and made allowances for everybody that was not. How could they be happy or good that had not my fortune? They had not, they never could have an Eva. There was but one Eva, and I had her!

I woke every morning with a strange, new thrill of joy. Was it so? Was she still in this world, or had this impossible, strange mirage of bliss risen like a mist and floated heavenward? I trembled when I thought how frail a thing human life is. Was it possible that she might die? Was it possible that an accident in a

railroad car, a waft of drapery toward an evening lamp, a thoughtless false step, a mistake in a doctor's prescription, might cause this lovely life to break like a bubble, and be utterly gone, and there be no more Eva, never, never more on earth? The very intensity of love and hope suggested the possibility of the dreadful tragedy that every moment underlies life; that with every joy connects the possibility of a proportioned pain. Surely love, if nothing else, inclines the soul to feel its helplessness and be prayerful, to place its treasures in a Father's hand.

Sometimes it seemed to me too much to hope for, that she should live to be my wife; that the fabulous joy of possession should ever be mine. Each morning I left my bunch of fresh violets with a greeting in it at her door, and assured myself that the earth yet retained her, and all day long I worked with the under-thought of the little boudoir where I should meet her in the evening. Who says modern New York life is prosaic? The everlasting poem of man and woman is as fresh there at this hour as among the crocuses and violets of Eden.

A graceful writer, in one of our late magazines, speaks of the freedom which a young man feels when he has found the mistress and queen of his life. He is bound to no other service, he is anxious about no other smile or frown. I had been approved and crowned by my Queen of Love and Beauty. If she liked me, what matter about the rest?

It did not disturb me a particle to feel that I was submitted to as a necessity, rather than courted as a blessing, by her parents. I cared nothing for cold glances or indifferent airs so long as my golden-haired Ariadne threw me the clue by which I threaded the labryinth, and gave me the talisman by which to open the door. Once safe with her in her little "Italy," the boudoir in which we first learned to know each other, we laughed and chatted, making ourselves a gay committee of observation on the whole world besides. Was there anybody so fortunate as we? and was there any end to our subject matter for conversation?

"You have no idea, Harry," she said to me, the first evening after our engagement had been declared, "what a time we've been having with Aunt Maria! You know she is mamma's oldest sister, and mamma is one of the gentle, yielding sort, and Aunt Maria has always ruled and reigned over us all. She really has a way of ordering mamma about, and mamma, I think, is positively afraid of her. Not that she's really ill-tempered, but she is one of the sort that thinks it's a matter of course that she should govern the world, and is perfectly astonished when she finds she can't. I have never resisted her before, because I have been rather lazy, and it's easier to give up than to fight; and, besides, one remembers one's