good-lookin' fellow that they never stop to think if he has anything
else to him. Not that he hasn't lots of good traits, I don't mean that.
But," she added shrewdly, "you don't look like the silly sort that would
be taken in by good looks alone."

"No," said Nora dryly, "I don't think I am."

After that, until the two men returned, they talked of household
matters, and Nora found that her new neighbor had a store of useful and
practical suggestions to make, and, what was even better, seemed glad to
place all her experience at her disposal in the kindliest and most
friendly manner possible, entirely free from any trace of that patronage
which had so maddened her in her sister-in-law.

"Now mind you," called Mrs. Sharp, as she laboriously climbed up to the
seat beside her husband as they were driving away, "if Frank, here, gets
at all upish--and he's pretty certain to, all newly married men do--you
come to me. I'll settle him, never fear."

Frank laughed a little over-loudly at this parting shot, and Nora
noticed that for some time after their guests had gone, he seemed
unusually silent.

As for the Sharps, they also maintained an unwonted silence--which for
Mrs. Sharp, at least, was something unusual--until they had arrived at
their own door.

"Well?" queried Sharp, as they were about to turn in.

"It beats me," replied his wife. "Why, she's a lady. But she'll come out
all right," she finished enigmatically, "she's got the right stuff in
her, poor dear!"

In after years, when Nora was able to look back on this portion of her
life and see things in just perspective, she always felt that she could
never be too thankful that her days had been crowded with occupation.
Without that, she must either have gone actually insane, or, in a frenzy
of helplessness, done some rash thing which would have marred her whole
life beyond repair.

After she found herself growing more accustomed to her new life--and,
after all, the growing accustomed to it was the hardest part--she
realized that she was only following the universal law of life in
paying for her own rash act. The thought that she was paying with
interest, being overcharged as it were, was but faint consolation: it
only meant that she had been a fool. That conviction is rarely soothing.

Then, too, she gradually began to look at the situation from Frank's
point of view. He had certainly acted within his rights, if with little
generosity. But she had to acknowledg