“Why so?” asked Olive quickly.  “I have always liked him, and now I like him ever so much better.  To be sure he is queer; but then he is so much queerer than I am that perhaps in comparison I might take up the part of commonplace partner.  Besides, he has money enough to live on.  He told me that when he first addressed me.  He said he would never ask any woman to live on pickled verse feet, and he has also told me something of his family, which must be a good one.”

“Olive,” said Mrs. Easterfield, “I don’t believe at all in the necessity or the sense in your precipitating plans of marrying.  It is all airy talk, anyway.  You can’t ask a man to step up and marry you in order that you may sit down and write a letter to your father.  But if you are thinking of marrying, or rather of preparing to marry at some suitable time, why, in the name of everything that is reasonable, don’t you take Mr. Lancaster?  He is as far above the other young men you have met here as the mountains are above the plains; he belongs to another class altogether.  He is a thoroughly fine young man, and has a most honorable profession with good prospects, and I know he loves you.  You need not ask me how I know it—­it is always easy for a woman to find out things like that.  Now, here is a prospective husband for you whose cause I should advocate.  In fact, I should be delighted to see you married to him.  He possesses every quality which would make you a good husband.”

Olive smiled.  “You seem to know a great deal about him,” said she, “and I assure you that so far as he himself is concerned, I have no objections to him, except that I think he might have had the courage to come and tell me the truth this morning, whatever it is.”

“Perhaps he has not found out the truth yet,” quickly suggested Mrs. Easterfield.

Olive fixed her eyes upon her companion and for a few moments reflected, but presently she shook her head.

“No, that can not be,” she answered.  “He would have let me know he had been obliged to wait.  Oh, no, it is all settled, and we can drop that subject.  But as for Mr. Lancaster, his connections would make any thought of him impossible.  He, and his father, too, are both close friends of my uncle, and he would be a constant communication between me and that woman unless there should be a quarrel, which I don’t wish to cause.  No, I want to leave everything of that sort as far behind me as it used to be in front of me, and as Professor Lancaster is mixed up with it I could not think of having anything to do with him.”

Mrs. Easterfield was silent.  She was trying to make up her mind whether this girl were talking sense or nonsense.  What she said seemed to be extremely nonsensical, but as she said it, it was difficult to believe that she did not consider it to be entirely rational.