formally engaged, so wholly did
they take it for granted that they should marry. It was so much a matter
of course that there was no hurry at all about it; and besides, so
long as they had it to look forward to, the foreground of life
was illuminated for them: it was still morning. Mr. Morgan was
constitutionally of a dreamy and unpractical turn, a creature of habits
and a victim of ruts; and as years rolled on he became more and more
satisfied with these half-friendly, half-loverlike relations. He never
found the time when it seemed an object to marry, and now, for very many
years, the idea had not even occurred to him as possible; and so far
was he from the least suspicion that Miss Rood's experience had not been
precisely similar to his own, that he often congratulated himself on the
fortunate coincidence.

Time cures much, and many years ago Miss Hood had recovered from the
first bitterness of discovering that his love had become insensibly
transformed into a very tender but perfectly peaceful friendship. No
one but him had ever touched her heart, and she had no interest in life
besides him. Since she was not to be his wife, she was glad to be his
lifelong, tender, self-sacrificing friend. So she raked the ashes over
the fire in her heart, and left him to suppose that it had gone out as
in his. Nor was she without compensation in their friendship. It was
with a delightful thrill that she felt how fully in mind and heart he
leaned and depended upon her, and the unusual and romantic character of
their relations in some degree consoled her for the disappointment of
womanly aspirations by a feeling of distinction. She was not like other
women: her lot was set apart and peculiar. She looked down upon her sex.
The conventionality of women's lives renders their vanity peculiarly
susceptible to a suggestion that their destiny is in any respect unique,
--a fact that has served the turn of many a seducer before now. To-day,
after returning from his drive with Miss Rood, Mr. Morgan had walked
in his garden, and as the evening breeze arose, it bore to his nostrils
that first indescribable flavor of autumn which warns us that the soul
of Summer has departed from her yet glowing body. He was very sensitive
to these changes of the year, and, obeying an impulse that had been
familiar to him in all unusual moods his life long, he left the house
after tea and turned his steps down the street. As he stopped at Miss
Rood's gate, Lucy,