hat was nobody's fault, and I can't let you make it yours. My
dear----"

"Wait. We must understand each other," said Penelope, rising from her
seat to prevent an advance he was making from his; "I want you to
realise the whole affair. Should you want a girl who hadn't a cent in
the world, and felt different in your mother's company, and had cheated
and betrayed her own sister?"

"I want you!"

"Very well, then, you can't have me. I should always despise myself.
I ought to give you up for all these reasons. Yes, I must." She looked
at him intently, and there was a tentative quality in her affirmations.

"Is this your answer?" he said. "I must submit. If I asked too much
of you, I was wrong. And--good-bye."

He held out his hand, and she put hers in it. "You think I'm
capricious and fickle!" she said. "I can't help it--I don't know
myself. I can't keep to one thing for half a day at a time. But it's
right for us to part--yes, it must be. It must be," she repeated; "and
I shall try to remember that. Good-bye! I will try to keep that in my
mind, and you will too--you won't care, very soon! I didn't mean
THAT--no; I know how true you are; but you will soon look at me
differently; and see that even IF there hadn't been this about Irene, I
was not the one for you. You do think so, don't you?" she pleaded,
clinging to his hand. "I am not at all what they would like--your
family; I felt that. I am little, and black, and homely, and they
don't understand my way of talking, and now that we've lost
everything--No, I'm not fit. Good-bye. You're quite right, not to have
patience with me any longer. I've tried you enough. I ought to be
willing to marry you against their wishes if you want me to, but I
can't make the sacrifice--I'm too selfish for that----" All at once she
flung herself on his breast. "I can't even give you up! I shall never
dare look any one in the face again. Go, go! But take me with you! I
tried to do without you! I gave it a fair trial, and it was a dead
failure. O poor Irene! How could she give you up?"

Corey went back to Boston immediately, and left Penelope, as he must,
to tell her sister that they were to be married. She was spared from
the first advance toward this by an accident or a misunderstanding.
Irene came straight to her after Corey was gone, and demanded,
"Penelope Lapham, have you been such a ninny as to send that man away
on my account?"

Penelope recoiled from this