wild one night at a serenade!"

"No," said Mrs. Henry Franklin Foster. "It isn't that. It isn't even
because she's afraid he'd be a dissipated husband and she wants to be
safe. It isn't because she's religious or hates wildness; it isn't even
because she hates wildness in him."

"Well, but look how she's thrown him over for it."

"No, that wasn't her reason," said the wise Mrs. Henry Franklin Foster.
"If men only knew it--and it's a good thing they don't--a woman doesn't
really care much about whether a man's wild or not, if it doesn't affect
herself, and Isabel Amberson doesn't care a thing!"

"Mrs. Foster!"

"No, she doesn't. What she minds is his making a clown of himself in
her front yard! It made her think he didn't care much about her. She's
probably mistaken, but that's what she thinks, and it's too late for
her to think anything else now, because she's going to be married
right away--the invitations will be out next week. It'll be a big
Amberson-style thing, raw oysters floating in scooped-out blocks of
ice and a band from out-of-town--champagne, showy presents; a colossal
present from the Major. Then Wilbur will take Isabel on the carefulest
little wedding trip he can manage, and she'll be a good wife to him, but
they'll have the worst spoiled lot of children this town will ever see."

"How on earth do you make that out, Mrs. Foster?"

"She couldn't love Wilbur, could she?" Mrs. Foster demanded, with no
challengers. "Well, it will all go to her children, and she'll ruin
'em!"

The prophetess proved to be mistaken in a single detail merely: except
for that, her foresight was accurate. The wedding was of Ambersonian
magnificence, even to the floating oysters; and the Major's colossal
present was a set of architect's designs for a house almost as elaborate
and impressive as the Mansion, the house to be built in Amberson
Addition by the Major. The orchestra was certainly not that local
one which had suffered the loss of a bass viol; the musicians came,
according to the prophecy and next morning's paper, from afar; and at
midnight the bride was still being toasted in champagne, though she had
departed upon her wedding journey at ten. Four days later the pair had
returned to town, which promptness seemed fairly to demonstrate that
Wilbur had indeed taken Isabel upon the carefulest little trip he could
manage. According to every report, she was from the start "a good wife
to him," but here in a final detail