not saying too much, that there are honester and more honorable men wearing the striped uniform of Sing-Sing at the present day, than Mr. Clarence was in heart at this juncture.
If the poor child had fallen into the snare, who would have been to blame? Not you, of course, most excellent and moral Mrs. Jones; nor would it have been the fault of her education, of course. We Americans are intolerant of an hereditary nobility, but consent to worship any pretender. We brag of our republicanism, and cringe to self-assumed superiority. In what was this son of a patroon better than the son of a potter? and in how much and how immeasurably inferior? Observe, gentle render, the present writer is far from believing all men equal; but let superiority be purchased by something more than lawful dollars or the counterfeit coin of assurance.
How could Elkhart contend alone against this social ill, or hope to uproot it? While he stood looking on, vexed at heart and conscious of the wrong, the love of the woman he would have given his life for was cajoled out of his keeping. She had been flattered into believing Elkhart's to be friendship, and Van Trump's true love; how could both be love which were so different? The descent to Avernus is so proverbially easy, that in the end who can say she may not have fallen, as natures as sweet and good have fallen before? But "when the tale of bricks is double, Moses comes."
Moses came now in the person of one Miss Keziah, the maiden aunt who had kept Elkhart's house for him since his falling heir to it. She came straight from his bedside, from hearing him raving of Mary Jones, and believing him on the verge of death. Mrs. Jones, from some feminine instinct not easily definable, had settled it in her own mind, that upon this especial forenoon young Van Trump would propose; and, taking her work with her somewhere, had left a clear field to these two lovers. There was no one else in the house, and when Miss Keziah, with her cap-strings undone, rushed unannounced into the parlor, Clarence was down upon his knees, protesting, imploring, almost crying, and poor frightened Mary Jones weeping for very bewilderment and helplessness.
But Miss Keziah cared for none of these things. It is doubtful if
