Ruby's Reward — page 325: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Walter remembered now that she had seemed a zood deal agitated at the time, but he had attributed it to her sufferings rather thau to any mental dis- turbance. “Our son,” madam continued, ‘was very bright and promising, and we gaye him eyery advantage, and built our fondest hopes upon him, But before he reached his eighteenth year, his father died, Per- haps, if he had lived, I could never have found it in my heart to turn against Ifim as I did later; but be- fore he was twenty, I had accepted Major Howland, a distinguished gentleman, a graduate trom West Point, and a native of my own State. He was an aristocrat in the strongest sense of the word, and could tolerate nothing of ‘plebeianiam,’ as he termed everything that savored of labor or trade. He soon became very fond of my handsome son, showered in- numerable favors upon him, and spared no expense or pains to make his education thorough and com- plete, You will perceive that it was a great blow to our expectations when, after leaving college, Walter insisted upon perfecting himself in some profession, and declared his intention of going North for that purpose, We would have much preferred him to settle down as a ‘gentleman’ and assist his step- father in the care of his large estate, which would have been his at my husband’s death, not to mention my own valuable property. But he was resolute, and we finally consented, reasoning that it could do him no harm to see something of the world; so we settled a handsome income upon him, and he left us for New York city, where his tastes led him to take up mechanical engineering. ‘‘All went well until he wrote us that he had met a beautiful girl whom he had learned to love, and asked us to be prepared to receive her as a daughter at no distant day. This news was like a thunderbolt tous both, We had never thought of such a con- tingency as his marrying a Northern gi Teasers at our hopes upon the daughter of a ome ee