John Hartley, when a young man, had wooed and won Althea\'s mother. Julia Belmont was a beautiful and accomplished girl, an heiress in her own right, and might have made her choice among at least a dozen suitors. That she should have accepted the hand of John Hartley, a banker\'s clerk, reputed "fast," was surprising, but a woman\'s taste in such a case is often hard to explain or justify. H............