Family Pride

"I do not believe I am in love with her," he said to himself that night, when, after his return from Mrs. Reynolds' he sat for a long time before the fire in his dressing-room, cogitating upon what he had heard, and wondering why it should affect him so much. "Of course I am not," he continued, feeling the necessity of reiterating the assertion by way of making himself believe it. "She is not at all what I used to imagine the future Mrs. Mark Ray to be. Half my friends would say she had no style, no beauty, and perhaps she has not. Certainly she does not look just like the ladies at Mrs. Reynolds' to-night, but give her the same advantages and she would surpass them all."

And then Mark Ray went off into a reverie, in which he saw Helen Lennox his wife, and with the aids by which he would surround her rapidly developing into as splendid a woman as little Katy Cameron, who did not need to be developed, but took all hearts at once by that natural, witching grace so much a part of herself. It was a very pleasant picture which Mark painted upon the mental canvas; but there came a great blur blotting out its brightness as he remembered Dr. Grant, and felt that Linwood was one day to be Helen's home.

"But it shall not interfere with my being just as kind to her as before. She will need some attendant here, and Wilford, I know, will be glad to shove her off his hands. He is so infernal proud," Mark said, and taking a fresh cigar he finished his reverie with the magnanimous resolve that were Helen a hundred times engaged she should be his especial care during her sojourn in New York.