A TRUE STORY OF NEW YORK LIFE.
By N. O. LORIMER.
ADA.
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CHAPTER I.
Ada Nicoli was just eighteen when my story opens. She was the daughter of a wealthy New York stock-broker, who took little thought of the welfare of his wife and children. Indeed, he had little time to devote to anything outside the interests of Wall Street. He went to business early in the morning before his family were down, and returned in the evening just in time for dinner, so weary and exhausted that very often he dined alone in his study to save the necessity of changing his business suit for evening dress.
Ada was a beautiful girl who had been indulged in a way which would seem almost impossible in the eyes of an English child. Before she was twelve years old she had as many jewels in her jewel-case as a wealthy English girl might hope to have at her wedding. She had a little pony phaeton of her own, drawn by a pair of perfectly-trained ponies, and guarded by a small nigger page in buttons. Ada Nicoli was the envy of all the other children of her acquaintance. She had been brought up by her doting mother to think of little else but her own pleasure and beauty. She had two sisters, a good many years younger than herself, who did not share the devotion of her mother. Marjory and Sadie were entirely superfluous commodities in Mrs. Nicoli’s eyes. “She had no use of them,” in her poor shallow life, for her lovely Ada was a sufficient companion and amusement. Ada Nicoli, compared with other American girls of her position, had received a very poor education. She had been well trained, it is true, in all the social etiquette necessary for the daughter of an American millionaire. In her mother’s eyes she was destined to be the wife of some Englishman of scant income but ancient pedigree, and her father had little time to interfere with his child’s up-bringing. His wife had had but a meagre education herself, and yet she managed to hold her own amongst the society hostesses of New York. It was pure selfishness on the part of Mrs. Nicoli that her child was thus deprived of the most valuable possession a woman can have, a highly-cultivated mind, for Ada was a bright intelligent girl, but her mother could not bear the sorrow of parting with her by sending her to a boarding-school, and her lessons at the day-school where she attended were so constantly interrupted by Mrs. Nicoli’s calling to take her daughter out with her in her carriage that the exasperated mistress soon learned that Ada’s education was a matter of little account in her parent’s eyes, and treated her accordingly.
Poor pretty Ada little knew, in these luxurious days of fine carriages and finer dresses, how bitterly she would one day regret her willingness to leave her lessons and the strict discipline of the schoolroom for the bright sunshine and pleasing admiration of the fashionable world in Central Park. It was so pleasant to sit by her pretty, delicate mother in the softly-cushioned carriage and drive through the beautiful green park, where the wisteria arbours were purple with long-tasselled flowers that scented the soft spring day. How she pitied the other girls in the schoolroom, who spent their cents as she spent dollars. What a dull life they had, and how badly their mothers chose their dresses! She was glad her mother liked her always to be dressed in white, it was so much prettier than anything else.