Their position in society demanded the sacrifice, and her aunt saw the urgent need for making it, notwithstanding the opposition of the young people themselves.
Ridgeway was a couple of years older than his affianced bride, and she was just short of twenty-three.

She, an orphan since early childhood, lived with her widowed aunt--the social gourmand, to quote Hugh Ridgeway--and he made his home next door with his sister and her husband.

The two brown stone houses were almost within arm's reach of each other.

She had painted dainty water colors for his rooms and he had thrown thousands of roses from his windows into her boudoir.

It had been a merry courtship--the courtship of modern cavalier and lady fair.
Ridgeway's parents died when he was in college, and he was left to enlarge or despise a fortune that rated him as a millionaire and the best catch in town--at that time.
He was a member of the Board of Trade, but he was scarcely an operator in the strictest sense of the word.