seemed to get on capitally well without him, but after all he could not help being conqueror in so just and inevitable a war.  The old proverb suddenly changed from a pebble to a diamond, and he thanked the philosopher more than once who had first reminded the world that faint heart ne’er won fair lady; presently he grew sad, as lovers will, and became paler and less vigorous, and made his friends wonder a good deal, until they at last suspected his sweet sorrow, and ranged themselves in eager ranks upon his side, with all history and tradition in their favor.

Nan herself was not among the first to suspect that one of her new friends had proved to be a lover; she had been turned away from such suspicions by her very nature; and when she had been forced to believe in one or two other instances that she was unwillingly drawing to herself the devotion which most women unconsciously seek, she had been made most uncomfortable, and had repelled all possibility of its further progress.  She had believed herself proof against such assailment, and so indeed she had been; but on the very evening of her battle for her opinions at Mrs. Fraley’s she had been suddenly confronted by a new enemy, a strange power, which seemed so dangerous that she was at first overwhelmed by a sense of her own defenselessness.

She had waited with Miss Fraley, who was not quite ready to leave the dining-room with the rest, and had been much touched by her confidence.  Poor Eunice had been very fond of one of her school-fellows, who had afterward entered the navy, and who had been fond of her in return.  But as everybody had opposed the match, for her sake, and had placed little reliance in the young man, she had meekly given up all hope of being his wife, and he had died of yellow fever at Key West soon after.  “We were not even engaged you know, dear,” whispered the little lady, “but somehow I have always felt in my heart that I belonged to him.  Though I believe every word you said about a girl’s having an independence of her own.  It is a great blessing to have always had such a person as my mother to lean upon, but I should be quite helpless if she were taken away....  Of course I have had what I needed and what we could afford,” she went on, after another pause, “but I never can get over hating to ask for money.  I do sometimes envy the women who earn what they spend.”

Nan’s eyes flashed.  “I think it is only fair that even those who have to spend their husband’s or their father’s money should be made to feel it is their own.  If one does absolutely nothing in one’s home, and is not even able to give pleasure, then I think it is stealing.  I have felt so strongly about that since I have grown up, for you know Dr. Leslie, my guardian, has done everything for me.  Aunt Nancy gave me money every year, but I never spent any of it until I went away to school, and then I insisted upon taking that and what my grandmother left me.  But my later studies have more than used it all.  Dr. Leslie is so kind to me, like an own father, and I am looking forward to my life with him most eagerly.  After the next year or two I shall be at home all the time, and I am so glad to think I can really help him, and that we are interested in the same things.”