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Here was where Dolly needed a mother. Had hers lived, my tale never would have been told; and yet it might not have ended as happily. Mr. Rycker was not of the im- pressionable type. He was the son of a wealthy family, well known and respected. He had been born and brought up in New York, and knew his own value quite well. Hosts of mammas had petted and encouraged him in behalf of numerous daughters since he was a little child, some of them being of a thrifty and forecasting turn, and he was somewhat surfeited with girlish society. But while he could not, having the common perceptions of humanity, be ignorant of these things, he had, thanks to being the son of a lady in the fullest sense of the word, never plumed himself on the distinction, but even at times felt it a certain drawback on his ideal of life, and wished it were possible to play Lord Burleigh, and be sure of some gentle heart that was unaware of his surroundings. He was a little vain, of course; but he had seen so many and such various styles of girls that he cared for none really, and therefore at twentyeight he was still unmarried and with an untouched heart, altogether devoted to his work. He certainly admired Dolly very much: children he always loved—if they were clean, well-bred, and pretty (it is only a woman who can love dirty and naughty children); and here was a peculiarly lovely child, elegant of aspect and attire, dainty, smiling, charming, coming up the little yard like a fashionable Flora, with bunches of late rich roses, clusters of velvet pansies, crowded chrysanthemums with disks of garnet, gold, and snow, or mystic passion-flowers and dusk heliotrope that lingered still in the conservatory. Sometimes in a dainty basket she brought fragrant peaches, pears of gilded russet, grapes of various tints struck through with October sunshine till they glowed like jewels against the odorous leaves on which she laid them; and thus, shaded sometimes with a wide black hat that made her face sparkle out of its shelter, or hooded with that rose-edged mantle of darkest blue from the soft morning mist that set every straying lock to curl about her glowing face like the moss calyx about a rose—bud, or with a bit of lace tied round her head like a baby cap, its delicate tracery against the pearly outlines of cheek and chin making a human cherub of her sweetest face, and suggesting cloud or cradle as its fit framing, she offered to this admiring young man a series of beautiful pictures that were a real godsend in the dingy surroundings of the parsonage; and when he became a frequent visitor at Mr. Vane’s house, not only in his official quality, but often invited as a genial and cultivated gentleman whom Mr. Vane enjoyed as a companion rarely vouchsafed to him in his retirement, he found Dolly interesting and delightful as the baby nieces he had left behind him in New York, and innocently wished she were not so tall and so overgrown, that he might pet and fondle her as he did Annetje and Hilda. Nor did Mr. Vane look at him in the light that a mother would have looked: Dolly was a child still to him, despite her seventeen years and her womanish trinkets, which, indeed, seemed no more mature or gorgeous than her baby corals, she wore them with such careless amusement and played with them so child- ishly. Alas! it was Dolly’s very childishness that brought matters to a crisis. In her heart she was innocent as they all thought her, but not so ignorant. She had found, in her researches on rainy days, an old shelf of books in the garret, and plunged into the volumes of Sir Charles Grandisonwith a certain delight in her simple soul at a real story-book, unknown to most modern girls who live on novels from earliest youth. So Dolly had her ideal of a man and of marriage, while her father and Katy supposed her yet absorbed in Hans Andersen and Grimm, and here arose before her the beaming image of which long since she dreamed, and she turned toward it as simply, as directly, as unconsciously as a daisy in the meadow turns its innocent yellow eye and candid rays toward the journeying sun. Without a shade of coquetry, or passion, or consideration, but at once, simply and without hesitation, Dolly loved this man, and knowing it, knew or thought of no reason why he should not love her—in fact, took it for granted that he would, if ever she thought about it; but now, like the baby—or the woman—that she was, only knew that she loved him, and that was life and wisdom enough for her.