For Womans Love | Page 3

minute to minute, carriages drive up the lawn avenue, discharge the
occupants at the main entrance of the house, and then roll off to the
stable yard in the rear.
These seemed to come in a slow procession.
"Only the nearest relations and most intimate friends of the family are
invited to the ceremony. There have only been five carriages passed
since we have been sitting here, and I don't believe there was one come
before we came, or that there'll be another come after that last one,
which was certainly the groom's," said Old Marwig.
"Oh! was it, indeed? But how do you know?" demanded Mrs. Bounce.
"It is the new carriage from North End Hotel! And he and his
groomsmen had engaged it. That's how I know! Here comes the
ferryboat! Now for it!"
The boat touched the banks, and as many as could find room crowded
into it, and were speedily rowed across the river and landed on the
other side, where they found a few of the lawn party there before them.
"There is Mr. Clarence Rockharrt coming toward us!" said Mrs.
Bounce, as the party walked up from the landing, and a medium-sized,
plump, fair man of middle age, with a round, fresh face, a smiling
countenance, blue eyes and light hair, and in "a wedding garment" of
the day, came down to meet them, and shook hands with all, warmly
welcoming them in the name of his father. Then he led them up to the

lawn and gave them chairs among the unoccupied seats at the various
tables.
"If you please, Mr. Clarence, is the groom in good health and sperrits?"
meaningly inquired Mrs. Bounce.
"Mr. Rothsay is in excellent health and spirits, thank you," replied the
gentleman, looking a little surprised at the question: an then moving off
quickly to receive some new arrivals.
The guests for the lawn party were constantly arriving, and the
ferryboat was kept busy plying from the shore to shore.
It is time now to introduce our readers to the house of Rockharrt.
Old Aaron Rockharrt, the head of that house, was at this time
seventy-five years of age and a wonder of health and strength. He was
called the "Iron King," no less from his great hardihood of body and
mind than from his vast wealth in mines and foundries. In size he was
almost a giant, with a large head covered by closely-curling, steel-gray
hair. His character may be summed up in a very few words:
Aaron Rockharrt was an incarnation of monstrous selfishness.
His manners to all, but especially to his dependants, were arrogant,
egotistical and overbearing. He was utterly destitute of sympathy or
compassion. There was no room for either in a soul so full of self. In
his opinion there was no one on earth, neither king nor Kaiser, saint nor
hero, so important to the universe as Aaron Rockharrt, head of
Rockharrt & Sons.
Yet Aaron Rockharrt had two redeeming points. He was strictly
truthful in word and honest in deed.
His wife was near his own age, a quiet, gentle, little old lady, small and
slim, with white hair half hidden by a lace cap. If she ever had any
individuality, it had been quite crushed out by the hard heel of her
husband's iron will. Their eldest son and second partner in the firm was

Fabian Rockharrt, a fine animal of fifty years old, though scarcely
looking forty. He had inherited all his father's great strength of body
and of mind, with more than his father's business talent; but he had not
inherited the truth and honesty of his father.
Yet there is no one wholly evil, and Fabian Rockharrt's one redeeming
quality was a certain good nature or benevolence which is more the
result of temperament than of principle. This quality rendered his
manner so kind and considerate to all his employes that he was the
most popular member of his family.
Clarence, the second son, was much younger than his elder brother, and
so diametrically opposite to him and to their father, both in person and
character, that he scarcely seemed to come of the same race.
He was really thirty-five years old, but looked ten years less, and was a
fair blonde, medium-sized and plump, with a round head covered with
light, curling yellow hair, a round, rosy face as bare as a baby's and
almost as innocent. He had not the satanic intellect of his father or his
brother, but he had a fine moral and spiritual nature that neither could
understand or appreciate.
There were yet two other exceptions to the family character of
worldliness and selfishness. There were Corona and Sylvanus Haught,
a sister and brother, orphan grand-children of Aaron Rockharrt, left him
by his deceased