Hawkehurst's dwelling. So sweet a wife, so
pleasant a home, popularized the institution of matrimony among the young
writer's bachelor friends; and that much-abused and cruelly maligned
member of the human race, the mother-in-law, was almost rehabilitated by
Mrs. Sheldon's easy good-nature and evident regard for the interests of
her daughter's husband.
And after all the groping among dry as dust records of a bygone century,
after all the patient following of those faint traces on the sands of
time left by the feet of Matthew Haygarth, _this_ was Charlotte's
Inheritance,--a heart whose innocence and affection made home a kind of
earthly paradise, and gave to life's commonest things a charm that all
the gold ever found in California could not have imparted to them. This
was Charlotte's Inheritance,--the tender, unselfish nature of the
Haygarths and Hallidays; and thus dowered, her husband would not have
exchanged her for the wealthiest heiress whose marriage was ever
chronicled in _Court Circular_ or _Court Journal_.
CHAPTER VIII.
LOST SIGHT OF.
A year and a half had passed since the disappearance of Philip Sheldon
from the circle in which he had been considered a person of some
importance. The repudiation of those bills by which he had sustained his
exhausted credit, or rather the discovery that the companies upon which
the bills pretended to be drawn were of all shadows the most shadowy, had
brought consternation upon many, and ruin upon some.
Pages:
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563