Year: 1872

ice between us, for we walked off to,


gether for several squares. As CON


planned Of u severe pain in my eyes


from the blow ] had received, my com


panion said, hope, Mr.. Hume. you


will pardon my recent rude persistence


in my fancied engagement with our fair
acquaintance, ana let us be good friends,
out of sympathy for the denouement. As
we are here at my hotel. let us enter
and drink to the good fortune OF Mr..


De Stultus.


81 gladly accepted the invitation and
we were engaged in pleasant conver-
sation when loud noise heard in
the street, mingled with the cry of a
woman in distress.


suddenly starting to our feet, we
rushed forth to render assistance. The
first object that met our sightwas Helen
Van Horn covered with mud, but hap
PLY more frightened than hurt. De
Stultus was also in wretched plight,
but too much engrossed, as might be ex
pected from such a creature, with his
own mishaps to give the least attention
to his associate IN misfortune, whom he
left to struggle to her feet unaided, and
to make her way to the sidewalk where
her recent visitors met her, and where
she hysterically explained how huge
truck, against which DeSultus' carriage
had been carelessly driven, had left
them stranded in the muddy street, for
tunately and marvelously, however,
without broken bones.


=" Churchill called a carriage, and we
escorted the wrecked demoiSelle back to
her residence. at the door of which we
congratulated her upon her lucky escape,
and bid her good night


MY new friend then proposed that
we should drive at once to the opera,
where he hoped we might meet party
of his friends, to whom he would be
pleased to introduce me, and in whose
society we would find sure ease for our
in regard to Miss Van
Horn. | assented. Churchill's friends
were met as he had promised, and
them were two beautiful sis
ters, so attractive that they speedily
drove all thoughts of merely hand
some girl, superficial and spoiled, like
Helen Van Horn, out of the head of
Churchill as well as my own. A charm
ing evening at the opera ripened into a
serious attachment on the part of
Churchill and myself for these sisters,
which ended in our marriage, and no
one ever had juster reason for saying,


There's divinity that shapes our ends.


Rough hew them how we will


than have! And now you know why
| did not marry Miss Van Horn. and
also how two men, for moment about
TO be made enemies through the reck-
less, unscrupulous coquetery of an in
ferlor, heartless woman, by happy
stroke of fortune became friends and
brothers.


''As for Helen Van Horn, she still
lives in single blessedncss, and upon the
of her many conquests, finding
her chief qualification, for some years
past, in recounting the various eligible
offers she had refused, including always
Churchill and myself among her re-
ected suitors. A heavy speculation in
which De Stultus had been beguiled
about the time of Miss Van Horns
triple engagements for the same even
ne, resulted SO disastrously for him
that her doors were at once rigidly
closed upon that admirer, who disap-
peared like quenched meteor from
society. Meanwhile occurred the death
Of old Mr.. Van Horn, which, as | have
said, left the daughter no other attrac-
ton then mere physical beauty, that
had now become so uSee that it ceased to
please manageable men, and she was
no longer able to make three engage
ments for one evening.


Hers has, indeed, been life of lost