just to buy my clothes and
things. At least, I do not care about so much as he has,--more than a
million dollars, only think! Perhaps they said two million. Is it wrong
for me to marry him, just because he has that?"

"Not if you love him."

"I do not exactly love him, but O Hope, I cannot tell you about it. I am
not so frivolous as you think. I want to do my duty. I want to make you
happy too: you have been so sweet to me."

"Did you think it would make me happy to have you married?" asked Hope,
surprised, and kissing again and again the young, sad face. And the two
girls went upstairs together, brought for the moment into more sisterly
nearness by the very thing that had seemed likely to set them forever
apart.

XIII. DREAMING DREAMS.

SO short was the period between Emilia's betrothal and her marriage,
that Aunt Jane's sufferings over trousseau and visits did not last long.
Mr. Lambert's society was the worst thing to bear.

"He makes such long calls!" she said, despairingly. "He should bring an
almanac with him to know when the days go by."

"But Harry and Philip are here all the time," said Kate, the accustomed
soother.

"Harry is quiet, and Philip keeps out of the way lately," she answered.
"But I always thought lovers the most inconvenient thing about a house.
They are more troublesome than the mice, and all those people who live
in the wainscot; for though the lovers make less noise, yet you have to
see them."

"A necessary evil, dear," said Kate, with much philosophy.

"I am not sure," said the complainant. "They might be excluded in the
deed of a house, or by the terms of the lease. The next house I take, I
shall say to the owner, 'Have you a good well of water on the premises?
Are you troubled with rats or lovers?' That will settle it."

It was true, what Aunt Jane said about Malbone. He had changed his
habits a good deal. While the girls were desperately busy about the
dresses, he beguiled Harry to the club, and sat on the piazza, talking
sentiment and sarcasm, regardless of hearers.

"When we are young," he would say, "we are all idealists in love. Every
imaginative boy has such a passion, while his intellect is crude and his
senses indifferent. It is the height of bliss. All other pleasures are
not worth its pains. With older men this ecstasy of the imagination is
rare; it is the senses that clutch or reason which holds."

"Is that an improvement?" asked some juvenile listener.

"N