It was not altogether Philip's fault, let us own, that he was in this
position. There are many young men like him in American society, of his
age, opportunities, education and abilities, who have really been
educated for nothing and have let themselves drift, in the hope that they
will find somehow, and by some sudden turn of good luck, the golden road
to fortune. He was not idle or lazy, he had energy and a disposition to
carve his own way. But he was born into a time when all young men of his
age caught the fever of speculation, and expected to get on in the world
by the omission of some of the regular processes which have been
appointed from of old. And examples were not wanting to encourage him.
He saw people, all around him, poor yesterday, rich to-day, who had come
into sudden opulence by some means which they could not have classified
among any of the regular occupations of life. A war would give such a
fellow a career and very likely fame. He might have been a "railroad
man," or a politician, or a land speculator, or one of those mysterious
people who travel free on all rail-roads and steamboats, and are
continually crossing and recrossing the Atlantic, driven day and night
about nobody knows what, and make a great deal of money by so doing.
Probably, at last, he sometimes thought with a whimsical smile, he should
end by being an insurance agent, and asking people to insure their lives
for his benefit.

Possibly Philip did not think how much the attractions of Fallkill were
increased by the presence of Alice there. He had known her so long, she
had somehow grown into his life by habit, that he would expect the
pleasure of her society without thinking mach about it. Latterly he
never thought of her without thinking of Ruth, and if he gave the subject
any attention, it was probably in an undefined consciousness that, he had
her sympathy in his love, and that she was always willing to hear him
talk about it. If he ever wondered that Alice herself was not in love
and never spoke of the possibility of her own marriage, it was a
transient thought for love did not seem necessary, exactly, to one so
calm and evenly balanced and with so many resources in her herself.

Whatever her thoughts may have been they were unknown to Philip, as they
are to these historians; if she was seeming to be what she was not, and
carrying a burden heavier than any one else carried, because she had to
bear it alone, she was only d