And so the days and years wore on until Frank was a man of twenty-four--a third-rate practitioner, too, whose sign, "Frank Van Buren, Attorney-at-law," etc., looked very fresh and respectable in front of the office on Washington Street, and Frank himself began to have thoughts of claiming Ethelyn's promise and having a home of his own. He would not live with his mother, he said; it was more independent to be alone; and then, from some things he had discovered in his bride-elect, he had an uneasy feeling that possibly the brown of Ethelyn's eyes might not wholly harmonize with the gray of his mother's, "for Ethie was spunky as the old Nick," he argued with himself, while "for perversity and self-conceit his mother could not be beaten." It was better they should keep up two households, his mother seeing to both, and if need be, supplying the wants of both. To do Frank justice, he had some very correct notions with regard to domestic happiness, and had he been poor and dependent upon his own exertions he might have been an average husband; at least he would have gotten on well with Ethelyn, whose stronger nature would have upheld his and been like a supporting prop to a feeble timber. As it was, he drew many pleasing pictures of the home which was to be his and Ethie's. Now it was in the city, near to his mother's and Mrs. General Tophevie, his mother's intimate friend, whose house was the open sesame to the crême de la crême of Boston society; but oftener it was a rose-embowered cottage, of easy access to the city, where he could have Ethie all to himself when his day's labor was over, and where the skies would not be brighter than Ethie's eyes as she welcomed him home at night, leaning over the gate in the pale buff muslin he liked so much, with rosebuds in her hair.
He had seen her thus so often in fancy, that the picture had become a reality, and refused to be erased at once from the mental canvas, when, in January, Miss Nettie Hudson, niece to Mrs. General Tophevie, came from Philadelphia, and at once took prestige of everything on the strength of the one hundred thousand dollars of which she was sole heiress. The Hudson blood was a mixture of blacksmith's and shoemaker's, and peddler's too, it was said; but that was far back in the past. The Hudsons of the present day scarcely knew whether peddler were spelled with two d's or one. They bought their shoes at the most fashionable shops, and could, if they chose, have their horses shod with gold, and so the handsome Nettie reigned supreme as belle. The moment Mrs. Dr. Van Buren saw her, she recognized her daughter-in-law, the future Mrs. Frank, and Ethie's fate was sealed. There had been times when Mrs. Dr. Van Buren thought it possible that Ethelyn might, after all, be the most favored of women, the wife of her son. These times were at Saratoga, and Newport, and Nahant, where Ethelyn Grant was more sought after than any young lady there, and where the proud woman herself took pride in talking of "my niece," hinting once, when Ethelyn's star was at its height, of a childish affaire du coeur between the young lady and her son, and insinuating that it might yet amount to something. She changed her mind when Nettie came with her one hundred thousand dollars, and showed a willingness to be admired by Frank. That childish affaire du coeur was a very childish affair, indeed; she never gave it a moment's thought herself--she greatly doubted if Frank had ever been in earnest, and if Ethelyn had led him into an entanglement, she would not, of course, hold him to his promise if he wished to be released. He must have a rich wife to support him in his refined tastes and luxurious habits, for her own fortune was not so great as many supposed. She might need it all herself, as she was far from being old, and then again it was wicked for cousins to marry each other. It did not matter if the mothers were only half-sisters; there was the same blood in the veins of each, and it would not do at all, even if Ethelyn's affections were enlisted, which Mrs. Van Buren greatly doubted.