An Ambitious Man

"Baroness Brown" was a distinctive figure in Beryngford. She came to

the place from foreign parts some three years before the arrival of

Preston Cheney, and brought servants, carriages and horses, and

established herself in a very handsome house which she rented for a

term of years. Her arrival in this quiet village town was of course

the sensation of the hour, or rather of the year. She was known as

Baroness Le Fevre--an American widow of a French baron. Large,

voluptuous, blonde, and handsome according to the popular idea of

beauty, distinctly amiable, affable and very charitable, she became

at once the fashion.

Invitations to her house were eagerly sought after, and her

entertainments were described in column articles by the press.

This state of things continued only six months, however. Then it

began to be whispered about that the Baroness was in arrears for her

rent. Several of her servants had gone away in a high state of

temper at the titled mistress who had failed to pay them a cent of

wages since they came to the country with her; and one day the

neighbours saw her fine carriage horses led away by the sheriff.

A week later society was electrified by the announcement of the

marriage of Baroness Le Fevre to Mr Brown, a wealthy widower who

owned the best shoe store in Beryngford.

Mr Brown owned ten children also, but the youngest was a boy of

sixteen, absent in college. The other nine were married and settled

in comfortable homes.

Mr Brown died at the expiration of a year. This one year had taught

him more of womankind than he had learned in all his sixty and nine

years before; and, feeling that it is never too late to profit by

learning, Mr Brown discreetly made his will, leaving all his property

save the widow's "thirds" equally divided among his ten children.

The Baroness made a futile effort to break the will, on the ground

that he was not of sound mind when it was drawn up; but the effort

cost her several hundred of her few thousand dollars and the

increased enmity of the ten Brown children, and availed her nothing.

An important part of the widow's third was the Brown mansion, a

large, commodious house built many years before, when the village was

but a country town. Everybody supposed the Baroness, as she was

still called, half in derision and half from the American love of

mouthing a title, would offer this house for sale, and depart for

fresh fields and pastures new. But the Baroness never did what she

was expected to do.