O Hiram Meeker, is it even now too late to obey some natural instincts? You are well embarked in affairs, have already made money enough to support a wife pleasantly. Your business is daily increasing, your mercantile position for a young man remarkably well assured. Here is a really lovely young girl—a little spoiled, it may be, by fashionable associations, but amiable, intelligent, and true hearted. Probably you might win her, for she seems to like you. The connection would give you position, for you would marry into an old and most respectable family. True, you have conducted yourself shamefully toward Emma Tenant—to say nothing of Miss Burns. Let that pass. There is still opportunity to retrace. Attempt to win Miss Innis. If you do win her, what a happy home will be yours! As for Miss Thorne—Hiram, you know what she is. You despise her in your heart. Besides, she is almost twenty-nine—you but twenty-seven. Will her money compensate? O Hiram, stop—stop now, and think!
This may have been the revery of Hiram Meeker.
At last he rose and prepared to retire. Doubtless he had made a final and irrevocable decision.
What was it?
CHAPTER XII.
There is good news for the Tenant family! The large commercial house in London whose failure dragged down Tenant & Co., had a branch at Rio. This branch had been heavily drawn on, and suspended because the firm in London stopped. When affairs were investigated, it turned out that the Rio branch was well aboveboard. The result was that the London house was enabled to pay a composition of fifteen and sixpence in the pound. This not only enabled Tenant & Co. to settle with their creditors, but placed that old and respectable firm in a position to go on with their business, though in a manner somewhat limited when compared with their former operations. The whole commercial community rejoiced at this. Tho house had been so long established, and was conducted with so much integrity, that to have it go down seemed a blow struck at the fair name and prosperity of the city. A committee appointed by the creditors had investigated everything connected with the failure, prior to hearing of the news from Rio. This committee utterly refused to permit Mr. Tenant to put his house into the list of assets from which to pay the company's debts. He insisted, but they were inexorable. This was highly gratifying to him, but he was not content. Now he could meet all on equal terms.
We must forgive Mrs. Tenant if she felt a very great degree of exultation at this result. The affair between Hiram Meeker and her daughter had touched her so deeply (until Emma was away she did not feel how deeply), that she could not but indulge her triumph that now, when she encountered him, she was able to pass him with complete indifference. While her husband was crippled, she continued to feel scorn and contempt. Having regained her old position, she enjoyed a repose of spirits and was no longer tantalized by recollection of the scenes of the last few months.
Emma Tenant had a most charming European tour. She was absent a year. Two or three months before her return, and while spending a few weeks among the Bernese Alps (I think Emma once told me it was at the Hotel Reichenbach, near Meyringen), she encountered an old acquaintance, that is, an acquaintance of her childhood, in the person of young Lawrence—Henry Lawrence—who was taking advantage of a business trip abroad to view the glory and the majesty of nature in the Oberland Bernois.