orse deformed than Mr. Wilmarth
being extravagantly loved," says Grandon, thinking how nearly this man
might have been her fate, and wondering if she could have reconciled
herself to it. "But we are very apt to connect warped bodies with
warped minds, and I must confess to a distaste for either. I should
like to be sure it was--regard that brought them together."

She remembers that Marcia is rather peculiar, always taking sudden
fancies and then dropping them. This she never can give up, never.

"What thought so perplexes that wise little face," asks her husband.

"Oh, she must have loved him or she could not have married him," she
says, still thinking of Marcia.

"Does that follow, I wonder?"

"Why, she had her choice, you know, there was no other reason for her
to marry him," she answers, innocently.

He wonders just now what Violet St. Vincent would have done had a
choice been hers! He is well aware that she obeyed her father, and that
he was not distasteful to her. She is sweet and dutiful and fond, not
at all exacting, and has the obedience of a well-trained child. Does he
care for anything more? Could he have it if he _did_ care, if he
desired it ardently?

Mrs. Jasper Wilmarth's reception is a crush. It would seem that no one
stayed away, and it looks as if they might have brought cousins and
aunts. She is in pale blue silk and velvet, and looks very pretty, for
Marcia brightens up wonderfully with becoming dress. Mr. Wilmarth's
tailor has made the best of his figure, and he brings out the training
of years agone, when he had some ambitions. Society decides that it
must have been merely a whim, for the man is certainly well enough, and
really adores her. Even Laura wonders how Marcia managed to inspire
this regard, and decides that the marriage is not so bad, after all,
and she shall never have Marcia to chaperone.

Floyd Grandon and his wife are down in the early part of the evening.
This is really Mr. Wilmarth's triumph. The greeting is courteous, if
formal, and the man has come to _him_, Jasper Wilmarth. As a member of
the Grandon family, he is not to be overlooked. As a man, he can win a
wife as well as the more favored ones, and there are women present with
much less style and prettiness than Marcia.

His whim has not proved so foolish, after all, and Marcia is at present
bewildered and conquered by the power he holds over her, brought for a
little while out of her silly self by an ennobling regar