I can't dress it 'fashionably' one bit, and when I twist it up it's so fine it goes into nothing and never looks the quantity it is.
However, we must all have our troubles!--with some it's teeth--with others it's ankles--we're never QUITE all right! The thing is to endure without complaining!" "And this curious creature who talked "so very strangely," possessed millions of money! Her father, who had arrived in the States from the wildest north of Scotland with practically not a penny, had so gathered and garnered every opportunity that came in his way that every investment he touched seemed to turn to five times its first value under his fingers.

When his wife died very soon after his wealth began to accumulate, he was beset by women of beauty and position eager to take her place, but he was adamant against all their blandishments and remained a widower, devoting his entire care to the one child he had brought with him as an infant from the Highland hills, and to whom he gave a brilliant but desultory and uncommon education.

Life seemed to swirl round him in a glittering ring of gold of which he made himself the centre,--and when he died suddenly "from overstrain" as the doctors said, people were almost frightened to name the vast fortune his daughter inherited, accustomed as they were to the counting of many millions.

And now--- ?" "California!" mused Lydia--"Sam Gwent thinks she has gone there after Roger Seaton.

But what can be her object if she doesn't care for him?
It's far more likely she's started for Sicily--she's having a palace built there for her small self to live in 'all by her lonesome'! Well! She can afford it!" And with a short sigh she let go her train of thought and left the verandah,--it was time to change her costume and prepare "effects" to dazzle and bewilder the uncertain mind of a crafty old Croesus who, having freely enjoyed himself as a bachelor up to his present age of seventy-four, was now looking about for a young strong woman to manage his house and be a nurse and attendant for him in his declining years, for which service, should she be suitable, he would concede to her the name of "wife" in order to give stability to her position.