Vesta stood above her mother, deeply moved, deeply earnest. Her mother stole another look at the bank check.

"Well, daughter, I will be humbugged by him if you desire it," she said, but with slight answering emotion. "If I had my life to go over again I would marry a business man, and let the aristocracy go. There is the second knock at the front-door. I believe I will dress myself and go down-stairs too."

There were two ladies in the parlor when Vesta went there - Grandmother Tilghman and the Widow Dennis.

"Good-evening, Vesta," said the old lady, who was stone-blind, but easily knew Vesta's footstep. "William thought you would not go to evening service on account of Mr. Milburn's illness, so I came around to sit till church was over, when he will take me home. But what is that I hear in this parlor, like somebody sniffling?"

"It's me, Aunt Vesty," said the voice of Rhoda Holland from the background.

"This is Mr. Milburn's niece, who has come here to stay with me," Vesta said.

"Ah! then it is no Custis. The last sniffle I heard was at the ball to Lafayette in the spring of 1781. The marquis had marched from Head of Elk to the Bald Friars' ferry up the Susquehanna and inland among the hills to Baltimore, and we gave him a ball which, at his request, was turned into a clothing-party. He snuffed so much that he kept up a sniffle all the evening, like"

Here Rhoda's sniffle was heard again.

"Yes, that's a good imitation," said Grandmother Tilghman, "but I don't like it."

"Did the gineral dance at the ball?" asked Rhoda. "What did he do with his swurd? Did he dance with it outen his scibburd?"

"He danced like a gentleman," Mrs. Tilghman replied, as if she would rather not, "and led me out in the first set. You danced with him, Vesta, at the ball in '24, forty-three years afterwards. Does he sniffle yet?"

"I don't recollect, grand-aunt. I was a little girl, and so much flattered that I thought everything he did was perfect."

"Ah me!" exclaimed Mrs. Tilghman, pulling the feather of her turban up, and looking as much like an old belle as possible at eighty years of age; "you danced before Lafayette with my grandson Bill. Bill hardly remembers Lafayette at all, thinking of you that night, so wonderful in your girl's charms. I told him Vesta would never marry him, as he was too plain and poor. But I never thought you would marry that"

Here Rhoda sniffled warningly.

"Yes," exclaimed the old lady, catching the sniffle; "I never thought you would marry that! But Bill is as dear a fool as ever. He says now that Meshach Milburn is a good man, too. I never thought he was above a"

Rhoda sniffled earnestly.

"Precisely that," exclaimed the old lady; "that was my estimate of the stock. Bill says he is a financial genius. I don't see what is to become of girls in this generation. Here is Ellenora, too good to marry Phoebus, the sailor man, too poor to marry anybody else; now, if Milburn had married her and taken her son Levin into his business, it would have been reasonable; but to take you and pervert your happiness, almost makes me"