outwardly obedient, inwardly mutinous.
She was generally calm in her mother's presence, never criticizing her
openly, and her merry heart kept her from being really unhappy in a
relationship that many girls would have found intolerable. Beaux she
had a-plenty and lovers not a few. As cream or honey to flies, so was
Dorothea Valentine to mankind in general; but she took them on gayly
and cast them off lightly, little harm being done on either side by
the brief experience.

Of course the suits of some of the suitors had been hard-pressed by
Mrs. Valentine. "You will go through the woods to find a crooked stick
at last, Dorothea," she would say. "You don't know a desirable _parti_
when you see one. You must have an extraordinary opinion of your own
charms to think that you have only to pick and choose. Those charms
will fade, rather prematurely, I fear, and when your looked-for ideal
comes along it may be that he will not regard you as flawless."

"I don't expect him to, mother! I only expect him to find my own flaws
interesting."

"There is no certainty of that, my dear,"--and Mrs. Valentine's tone
was touched with cynicism. "I had an intimate friend once, Clara
Wyman, a very nice girl she was, who had been in love with my cousin
Roger Benson for years. He seemed much attached to her and when time
went by and nothing happened, I spoke to him plainly one night and
asked him if he didn't intend to propose to her, and if not, what were
his reasons. What do you suppose they were?"

Mrs. Valentine's tone implied that a shock was coming.

Dolly sat erect on her mother's Italian day-bed as one prepared.

"I'm sure I have no idea--how could I have?" she asked.

"Roger said that he didn't like her wiping her nose through her
veil!!"

Dolly flung herself at length on the couch and buried her face in the
cushions, her whole body shaking convulsively with silent mirth.

"You may laugh, Dorothea, but this incident, which I have told many
times, shows how fantastic, erratic, despotic, and hypercritical men
generally are. You will come to your senses some time and realize that
no one is likely to bear with your perversities more patiently than
Arthur Wilde or Lee Wadsworth, who have both wasted a winter dangling
about you."

Dolly raised her head, patted her hair, and wiped her streaming eyes.

"I realize the dangerous obstacles between me and the altar as I never
did before,"--and the girl's voice was full of laughter. "B