sit here now, in this lovely
home, I think--isn't it sweeter and wiser and better this way? For a
while,--because I was a hot-headed, rebellious girl!--I couldn't see
that he was right. I had had a disappointment, you know," she went on,
her kind, mild eyes watering. Genevieve, who had been gazing in
some astonishment at the once hot-headed, rebellious girl, sighed
sympathetically. Every one knew about the Reverend Mr. Totter's death.

"And after that I just wanted to be busy," continued Emelene. "I wanted
to be a trained nurse, or a matron, or something! I look back at it now,
and wonder what I was thinking about! And then dear Mama went, and I
stepped into her place with P'pa. He wasn't exactly an invalid, but he
did like to be fussed over, to have his meals cooked by my own hands,
even if we were in a hotel. And whist--dear me, how I used to dread
those three rubbers every evening! I was only a young woman then, and
I suppose I was attractive to other men, but I never forgot Mr. Totter.
And Cousin George," she turned to him submissively, "when you were
talking about a woman's real sphere, I felt--well, almost guilty.
Because only that one man ever asked me. Do you think, feeling as I did,
that I should have deliberately made myself attractive to men?"

George cleared his throat. "All women can't marry, I suppose. It's in
England, I believe, that there are a million unmarried women. But you
have made a contented and a womanly life for yourself, and, as a matter
of fact, there always _has_ been a man to stand between you and the
struggle!" he said.

"I know. First P'pa, and now you!" Emelene mused happily.

"I wasn't thinking of myself. I was thinking that your father left you a
comfortable income!" he said quickly.

"And now you have asked me here; one of the dearest old places in town!"
Emelene added innocently.

Genevieve listened in a stupefaction. This was married life, then? Not
since her childhood had Genevieve so longed to stamp, to scream, to
protest, to tear this twisted scheme apart and start anew!

She was not a crying woman, but she wanted to cry now. She was not--she
told herself indignantly--quite a fool. But she felt that if George went
on being martyred, and mechanically polite, and grim, she would go into
hysterics. She had been married less than six weeks; that night she
cried herself to sleep.

Her guests were as agreeable as their natures permitted; but Genevieve
was reduced, before the t