They occurred very much at the same hour and together, the two main things that-exclusive of thedeath of his mother, recent and deeply felt by him-had yet befallen Ralph Pendrel, who, at thirty, had known fewer turns of fortune than many men of his age. But as these matters were quitedistinct I take them for clearness in their order. He had up to this time perforce encountered lifemainly in the form of loss and of sacrifice-inevitabilities these, however, such as scarce representeda chequered career. He had been left without his father in childhood; he had then seen two sistersdie; he had in his twentieth year parted by the same law with his elder and only brother; and he hadfinally known the rupture of the strongest tie of all, an affection for which, as a living claim, he hadhad to give up much else. Among these latter things, none the less, he had not as yet had to reckonMrs. Stent Coyne, and this even though the thought of such a peril was on the eve of his crisis fairlypresent to him. The peril hung before him in fact, though the first note of the crisis had by that timealready sounded, from a different quarter, in the guise of a positive stroke of luck. It appeared thatwhat destiny might call on him for this time would not be just another relinquishment. A letter froma friend in England, a fellow-country-man spending a few months in London and having friends ofhis own there-had mentioned to him the rumoured grave illness and imminent extinction, at agreat age, of the last person in that country bearing Ralph's family name, a person of a distantcousinship with whom he had been indifferently aware. His indifference was not a little enlivened bya remark of his correspondent. "Surely when he does die you'll come in for something!""Surely" was a good deal to say and the whole hint fantastic-it took so much for granted; yet thewords had an effect. This effect was that Ralph determined to mention the matter on the sameoccasion as something else the revolving months had charged him with, something he had at lastreally straightened himself to say to the woman he loved. He had had his fears, and in addition toother hindrances, infelicities of circumstance, imperfections of opportunity, had long deterred him, and he was now disposed to throw himself upon anything that could figure as a help. It mightsupport him to be able to tell her there was a chance for him of a property-probably of somewonderful old house-in England: though less, properly speaking, as an improvement to his state offortune, which might sufficiently pass, than as a bribe to her sense of the romantic. That faculty hadoriginally been strong in her and what could be more depended on at any time in New York, in ParkAvenue, to show as inordinate, as fetching, by the vulgar term, than so possibly to "come in" forsomething strange and storied, ancient and alien? Aurora Coyne was magnificent; that was where hisinterest in her and her effect upon him were strongest. Beautiful, different, proud, she had acongruity with things that were not as the things surrounding her, and these usual objects, inwhatever abundance, were not the bribe to offer. He was glad, at this hour, that his name, bycommon consent-above all, always, it was true, in Park Avenue-cast a fine sharp traceableshadow, or in other words that his race had something of a backward, as well as of a not toosprawling lateral reach. He knew how little his possession of more mere money would help him, andalso that it would have been in his interest to be personally quite of another type; but that hiscleverness could on occasion please her he struck himself as in a position to remember, and he atpresent, turning the whole case over, found aid in the faith that she might at the worst marry him forcuriosity. He was for that matter himself just now inflamed with a curiosity that might provecommunicabl