Wee Wifie

never experienced contradiction or restraint, she was little practiced in self-control; nothing bu

have replied in patriarchal language that few and evil had been he

tkins's shop, a young girl in a white dress, with a face as radiant as the spring morning itself,

in those early days say that

her feet, and a Scotch deerhound beside her, and both face and figure were well-nigh faultless. Nea had lost her mother in her childhood, and she lived

y child, and all his hop

ve of power, the desire for wealth, were evenly balanced and made subservient to a most indomitable will. T

on with the traditional shilling in his pocket, and had worked his way to

ere was no room for tenderness; he had loved his handsome young wife in a cool temperate fashion, but she had never influenced him, never really comprehended him; his iron will, hidden under a show of courtesy, had repressed her from the

s to wait on her, the little creature grew up wayward and self-willed; her caprices

t home. Sometimes Nea, playing in the square garden under the acacias, would look up and see a somber dark face w

le dimpled hand would wave confidingly. "Good-bye, papa," she would say in her shrill little voice, but he never heard her; h

en, childhood i

verness in the grand open carriage, where her tiny figure seemed almost lost. Nea remembered d

ce Beautiful? look how its windows are

e speech, and the tears that had come into her mother's eyes. What did it all mean? she wondered; why were the

his little daughters in the square garden, Nea watched them curiously, but without any painful comparison. "My papa is always busy, Nora," she said, loftily, to one of the little girl

d Janie," returned Nora, with a wise nod of

lay with her, oppressed her childish brain; and that evening Nea moped in her splendid nursery, and would not be consoled by her to

f you are good, you shall go into one of the best bedrooms and look at them." But Nea was not to be pacified by this; the tears ended in a fit of perverse sulking that lasted until bedtime. Nea would neither look at the carriages nor the people;

looked like a mass of blue and white draperies flung across his door, but as he lowered his candlestick he

," and one warm arm crept about his neck, but she was soon fast asleep again. Somehow that childish caress haunted Mr. Huntingdon, and he thought once or twice how pretty she had looked. Nu

llingly enough, an

y, as he kissed her. "Did nurse tell you that I found you l

? I tried not to go to sleep until you

wrong for a little girl to be out of her bed at that time of night?" But as Mr. Huntingdon spok

e, you know, and nurse is so cross, and so is Miss Sanderson; they will never let me come and find you; so when nurse came to

, more and more puzzled; it never entered his head

bleton was playing with Nora and Janie, and Nora said her papa was never too busy to play with them, and that made me cry a little, for you never play with me, do

her. "There, run away, Nea, for I am really in a hurry; if you are a good girl you shall come down

eing demonstrative, for to his cold nature demonstration was impossible; he soon evinced a decided partial

e sat beside him as he ate his dinner, and heard about the ships that were coming across the ocean laden with goodly freights. Nea grew into a beautiful girl presently, and then a new ambition awoke in Mr. Huntingdon's breast. Nea was his only child-with such beauty, talents, and wealth, she would be a match for an earl's son; his heart swelled with pride as he looked at h

if Lord Bertie became his son-in-law-but he was well-bred and had plenty of good nature, and-Well, young men were all alike, they would have their fling, and he was hardly the man to cast a stone at them. Then he was a good-looking fellow, and girls liked him; and if Nea laughed at him, and said that he was stupid, he c

d son; but his brother, Lord Leveson, was still a bachelor, and rather shaky in his health. The family were not as a rule long-lived; they were constitutionally and morally weak; and the old earl had already had a tou

ue, he had denied her nothing; he had never demanded even a trifling sacrifice from her; there was no fear that she would cross his will if he told her seriously that he had set his heart on this marriage; and he felt no pi

her father's mind as she watched him fondl

p fresh, green, and laden with dews; and soft breezes, fragrant with the promise of summer, come stealing into the open windows. Nea looked like the embodiment of spring as she stood there in her white gown. Below her was the cool green garden of

hen with the birds and all the live young things that sport in the sunshin

t empty rooms of Belgrave House, with her hands full of golden pr

as she flitted, like a white butterfly, from one flower vase to another, that her spring-tide w