tell you
outright that Mr. Pruyn requested me more than once to put a stop to
your acquaintance with Dorothea, and I refused. I refused at first
because I didn't think it wise, and afterward because I liked you. I
kept on refusing because I came to see in the end that you were born to
marry Dorothea, and that no one else would ever suit her. I'm here this
evening because I believe that still, and I want you to be happy."

"Did you think your coming would make us happier?"

"In the long run--yes. You may not see it to-night, but you will
to-morrow. You can't imagine that I would run the risk of forcing
myself upon you unless I was sure there was something I could do."

"Well, what is it?"

"It isn't much, and yet it's a great deal. When you and Dorothea are
married I want to go with you. I want to be there. I don't want her to
go friendless. When she goes back to town to-morrow, and everything has
to be explained, I want her to be able to say that I was beside her. I
know that mine is not a name to carry much authority, but I'm a woman--a
woman who has head a position of responsibility, almost a mother's
place, toward Dorothea herself--and there are moments in life when any
kind of woman is better than none at all. You may not see it just now,
but--"

"Oh yes, I do," he said, slowly; "only when you've gone in for an
unconventional thing you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb."

"I don't agree with you. Nothing more than the unconventional requires a
nicely discriminating taste; and it's no use being more violent than you
can help. You and Dorothea are making a match that sets the rules of
your world at defiance, but you may as well avail yourselves of any
little mitigation that comes to hand. Life is going to be hard enough
for you as it is--"

"Oh, I don't know about that. They can't do anything to us--"

"Not to you, perhaps, because you're a man. But they can to Dorothea,
and they will. This is just one of those queer situations in which
you'll get the credit and she'll get the blame. You can always make a
poem on Young Lochinvar, when it's less easy to approve of the damsel
who springs to the pillion behind him. I don't pretend to account for
this idiosyncrasy of human nature; I merely state it as a fact. Society
will forget that you ran away with Dorothea, but it will never forget
that she ran away with you."

"H'm!"

"But I don't see that that need distress you. You wouldn't care; and as
for D