Even Mr. Yorke had begun to favor Mr. Lancaster after Mrs. Yorke had skilfully pointed out that Alice’s next most attentive admirer was Ferdy Wickersham.

“Why, I thought he was still trying to get that Caldwell girl,” said he.

“You know he cannot get her; she is married,” replied Mrs. Yorke.

“I guess that would make precious little difference to that young man, if she would say the word.  I wish he would keep away from here.”

“Oh, Ferdy is no worse than some others; you were always unjust to him.  Most young men sow their wild oats.”

No man likes to be charged with injustice by his wife, and Mr. Yorke’s tone showed that he was no exception to this rule.

“He is worse than most others I know, and the crop of oats he is sowing, if he does not look out, he will reap somewhere else besides in New York.  Alice shall marry whom she pleases, provided it is not that young man; but she shall not marry him if she wants to.”

“She does not want to marry him,” said Mrs. Yorke; “if she had she could have done it long ago.”

“Not while I lived,” said Mr. Yorke, firmly.  But from this time Mr. Yorke began to acquiesce in his wife’s plans touching Mr. Lancaster.

Finally Alice herself began to yield.  The influences were very strong, and were skilfully exerted.  The only man who had ever made any lasting impression on her heart was, she felt, out of the question.  The young school-teacher, with his pride and his scorn of modern ways, had influenced her life more than any one else she had ever known, and though under her mother’s management the feeling had gradually subsided, and had been merged into what was merely a cherished recollection, Memory, stirred at times by some picture or story of heroism and devotion, reminded her that she too might, under other conditions, have had a real romance.  Still, after two or three years, her life appeared to have been made for her by Fate, and she yielded, not recognizing that Fate was only a very ambitious and somewhat short-sighted mamma aided by the conditions of an artificial state of life known as fashionable society.

Keith wrote Alice Yorke a letter congratulating her upon her safe return; but a feeling, part shyness, part pride, seized him.  He had received no acknowledgment of his last letter.  Why should he write again?  He mailed the letter in the waste-basket.  Now, however, that success had come to him, he wrote her a brief note congratulating her upon her return, a stiff little plea for remembrance.  He spoke of his good fortune:  he was the agent for the most valuable lands in that region, and the future was beginning to look very bright.  Business, he said, might take him North before long, and the humming-birds would show him the way to the fairest roses.  The hope of seeing her shone in every line.  It reached Alice Yorke in the midst of preparation for her marriage.