made a dress for anybody but myself."

"You are a little witch!" said Hesper; while Mary, who had roughly
prepared a larger shape, proceeded to fit it to her person.

She was busy pinning and unpinning, shifting and pinning again, when
suddenly Hesper said:

"I suppose you know I am going to marry money?"

"Oh! don't say that. It's too dreadful!" cried Mary, stopping her work,
and looking up in Hesper's face.

"What! you supposed I was going to marry a man like Mr. Redmain for
love?" rejoined Hesper, with a hard laugh.

"I can not bear to think of it!" said Mary. "But you do not really mean
it! You are only--making fun of me! Do say you are."

"Indeed, I am not. I wish I could say I was! It is very horrid, I know,
but where's the good of mincing matters? If I did not call the thing by
its name, the thing would be just the same. You know, people in our
world have to do as they must; they can't pick and choose like you
happy creatures. I dare say, now, you are engaged to a young man you
love with all your heart, one you would rather marry than any other in
the whole universe."

"Oh, dear, no!" returned Mary, with a smile most plainly fancy-free. "I
am not engaged, nor in the least likely to be."

"And not in love either?" said Hesper--with such coolness that Mary
looked up in her face to know if she had really said so.

"No," she replied.

"No more am I," echoed Hesper; "that is the one good thing in the
business: I sha'n't break my heart, as some girls do. At least, so they
say--I don't believe it: how could a girl be so indecent? It is bad
enough to marry a man: that one can't avoid; but to die of a broken
heart is to be a traitor to your sex. As if women couldn't live without
men!"

Mary smiled and was silent. She had read a good deal, and thought she
understood such things better than Miss Mortimer. But she caught
herself smiling, and she felt as if she had sinned. For that a young
woman should speak of love and marriage as Miss Mortimer did, was too
horrible to be understood--and she had smiled! She would have been less
shocked with Hesper, however, had she known that she forced an
indifference she could not feel--her last poor rampart of sand against
the sea of horror rising around her. But from her heart she pitied her,
almost as one of the lost.

"Don't fix your eyes like that," said Hesper, angrily, "or I shall cry.
Look the other way, and listen.--I am marrying money, I tell you--and
for money;