women we, as
women ourselves, would wish our sons or brothers to marry. But perhaps
you do not comprehend my cause of fear, which is this--for in such
matters men do not see as we women do--Graham abhors, in the girls of
our time, frivolity and insipidity. Very rightly, you will say. True,
but then he is too likely to be allured by contrasts. I have seen him
attracted by the very girls we recoil from more than we do from those
we allow to be frivolous and insipid. I accused him of admiration for a
certain young lady whom you call 'odious,' and whom the slang that has
come into vogue calls 'fast;' and I was not satisfied with his answer,
'Certainly I admire her; she is not a doll--she has ideas.' I would
rather of the two see Graham married to what men call a doll, than to a
girl with ideas which are distasteful to women."

Lady Janet then went on to question the Duchess about a Miss Asterisk,
with whom this tale will have nothing to do, but who, from the little
which Lady Janet had seen of her, might possess all the requisites that
fastidious correspondent would exact for the wife of her adopted son.

This Miss Asterisk had been introduced into the London world by the
Duchess. The Duchess had replied to Lady Janet, that if earth could be
ransacked, a more suitable wife for Graham Vane than Miss Asterisk could
not be found; she was well born--an heiress; the estates she inherited
were in the county of--(viz., the county in which the ancestors of
D'Altons and Vanes had for centuries established their whereabout). Miss
Asterisk was pretty enough to please any man's eye, but not with the
beauty of which artists rave; well informed enough to be companion to a
well-informed man, but certainly not witty enough to supply bons mots to
the clubs. Miss Asterisk was one of those women of whom a husband might
be proud, yet with whom a husband would feel safe from being talked
about.

And in submitting the letter we have read to Graham's eye, the Duchess
had the cause of Miss Asterisk pointedly in view. Miss Asterisk had
confided to her friend, that, of all men she had seen, Mr. Graham Vane
was the one she would feel the least inclined to refuse.

So when Graham Vane returned the letter to the Duchess, simply saying,
"How well my dear aunt divined what is weakest in me!" the Duchess
replied quickly, "Miss Asterisk dines here to-morrow; pray come; you
would like her if you knew more of her."

"To-morrow I am engaged--an American