The Queen of Hearts

E was a lively, handsome young woman, and w

a necessary word, to explain the sing

some district of South Wales. No such thing as a line of railway runs anywhere near us. No gentleman’s seat is within an easy drive o

f the London poor; and he would, in all probability, have sacrificed his life to his duty long before the present time if The Glen Tower had not come into his possession through two unexpected deaths in the elder and richer branch of our family. This opening to him of a pl

melled of tobacco when he felt languid pulses in elegant bedrooms; in the third place, he was the most formidably outspoken teller of the truth as regarded himself, his profession, and his patients, that ever imperiled the social standing of the science of medicine. For these reasons, and for others which it is not necessary to mention, he never pushed his way, as a doctor, into the front ranks, and he never cared to do so. About a year after Owen came into possession of The Glen Tower, Morgan discovered that he had saved as much money for his old age as a sensible man could want; that he was tired of t

o the dreary old house, and the sheltering quiet of the Welsh hills. My career in life had led me away from my brothers; and even no

g excursions in all parts of the Continent; year by year my circle of gay friends and acquaintances increased, and I bade fair to sink into the condition of a wandering desultory man, without a fixed purpose in life of any sort, whe

ge and its responsibilities came the necessity for serious exertion. I returned to my neglected studies, and grappled resolutely, this time, with the intricate

eful tenderness that no words of mine can express. The memory of my wife is busy at my heart while I think of those pas

d to see our only child — our son, who was so good to her, who is still so good to me — grow up to manhood; that her head lay on my bo

rld until I had seen h im prosperous and settled. But his choice led him to the army; and before his mother’s death he had obtained his commission, and had entered on his path in life. No other responsibility remained to claim from me the sacrifice of myself; my brothers had made my place ready for me by their fireside; my heart yearned, in its desolation, for the friends and companions of

hat we have never yet wearied of the time, of the place, or of ourselves; and that the influence of solitude on our hearts and minds has not altered them for the worse, for it has not embittered us toward our fellow-creatures, and it has not dried up in us

urness of address, and a tone of dry sarcasm in his talk, which single him out, on all occasions, as a character in our little circle; brother Griffith forming the link between his two elder companions, capable, at one time, of sympathizing with the quiet, thoughtful tone of Owen’s conver

land-lighthouse, built up in many stories of two rooms each, with a little modern lean-to of cottage form tacked on quaintly to one of its sides; the great hill, on whose lowest slope it stands, ri

the modern accomplishments at the tips of her delicate fingers. Imagine such a light-hearted daughter of Eve as this, the spoiled darling of society, the charming spendthrift of Nature’s choicest treasures of beauty and youth, suddenly flashing into the dim life of three weary old men — suddenly dropped into the place, of all others, which is least fit for her — suddenly shut out from the world in the lonely quiet of the l