When left a widow with an only daughter she had schemed and contrived in endless ways to maintain an appearance of competency on a meager income.

Finally she divided her capital, derived from her husband's life insurance, into three equal parts, which she determined to squander in three years in an attempt to hoodwink the world with the belief that she was wealthy.

Before the three years were ended her daughter Louise would be twenty, and by that time she must have secured a rich _parti_ and been safely married.

In return for this "sacrifice" the girl was to see that her mother was made comfortable thereafter.
This worldly and foolish design was confided to Louise when she was only seventeen, and her unformed mind easily absorbed her mother's silly ambition.

It was a pity, for Louise Merrick possessed a nature sweet and lovable, as well as instinctively refined--a nature derived from her dead father and with little true sympathy with Mrs.Merrick's unscrupulous schemes.