air dressed to a marvel, was a vision
to have touched any man's fancy. She was in one of her sweet acquiescent
moods, too, having recovered herself since the afternoon; and when she
led him into the parlor, she blushed without any reason whatever, as
usual, and as a consequence looked enchanting.

"Phil has gone out," she said. "'Toinette is putting Tod to bed, and
Aimee is helping her; so there is no one here but me."

Gowan sat down--in Dolly's favorite chair.

"You are quite enough," he said; "quite enough--for me."

She turned away, making a transparent little pretence of requiring a
hand-screen from the mantelpiece, and, having got it, she too sat down,
and fell to examining a wretched little daub of a picture upon it most
minutely.

"This is very badly done," she observed, irrelevantly. "Dolly did it,
and made it up elaborately into this screen because it was such a sight.
It is just like Dolly, to make fun and joke at her own mistakes. She has
n't a particle of talent for drawing. She did this once when Griffith
thought he was going to get into something that would bring him money
enough to allow of their being married. She made a whole lot of little
mats and things to put in their house when they got it, but Griffith did
n't get the position, so they had to settle down again."

"Good Heavens!" ejaculated Gowan.

"What is the matter?" she asked.

He moved a trifle uneasily in his chair. He had not meant to speak
aloud.

"An unintentional outburst, Mollie," he said. "A cheerful state of
affairs, that."

"What state of affairs?" she inquired. "Oh, you mean Dolly's engagement.
Well, of course, it _has_ been a long one; but then, you see, they like
each other very much. Aimee was only saying this afternoon that they
cared for each other more now than they did at first."

"Do they?" said Gowan, and for the time being lapsed into silence.

"It's a cross-grained sort of fortune that seems to control us in this
world, Mollie," he said, at length.

Mollie stared at the poor little daub on her hand-screen and met his
philosophy indifferently enough.

"_You_ ought n't to say so," she answered. "And I don't know anything
about it."

He laughed--quite savagely for so amiable a young man.

"I!" he repeated. "I ought not to say so, ought n't I? I think I ought.
It _is_ a cross-grained fortune, Mollie. We are always falling in love
with people who do not care for us, or with people who care for some one
else