to become
grave. At the bottom of her heart there was a doubt whether so light a
way of treating serious things was not a little wicked.

"Perhaps," she said, "we shall have to go back to the idea that
engagements and marriages are not intended to be regulated by the
judgment, but by the affections."

"I don't know what's intended," said Mrs. Brinkley, "but I know what is.
In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the affections have it their own
way, and I must say I don't think the judgment could make a greater mess
of it. In fact," she continued, perhaps provoked to the excess by the
deprecation she saw in Miss Cotton's eye, "I consider every broken
engagement nowadays a blessing in disguise."

Miss Cotton said nothing. The other ladies said, "Why, Mrs. Brinkley!"

"Yes. The thing has gone altogether too far. The pendulum has swung in
that direction out of all measure. We are married too much. And as a
natural consequence we are divorced too much. The whole case is in a
nutshell: if there were no marriages, there would be no divorces, and
that great abuse would be corrected, at any rate."

All the ladies laughed, Miss Cotton more and more sorrowfully. She liked
to have people talk as they do in genteel novels. Mrs. Brinkley's bold
expressions were a series of violent shocks to her nature, and imparted
a terrible vibration to the fabric of her whole little rose-coloured
ideal world; if they had not been the expressions of a person whom a
great many unquestionable persons accepted, who had such an undoubted
standing, she would have thought them very coarse. As it was, they had
a great fascination for her. "But in a case like that of"--she looked
round and lowered her voice--"our young friends, I'm sure you couldn't
rejoice if the engagement were broken off."

"Well, I'm not going to be 'a mush of concession,' as Emerson says, Miss
Cotton. And, in the first place, how do you know they're engaged?"

"Ah, I don't; I didn't mean that they were. But wouldn't it be a
little pathetic if, after all that we've seen going on, his coming here
expressly on her account, and his perfect devotion to her for the past
two weeks, it should end in nothing?"

"Two weeks isn't a very long time to settle the business of a lifetime."

"No."

"Perhaps she's proposed delay; a little further acquaintance."

"Oh, of course that would be perfectly right. Do you think she did?"

"Not if she's as wise as the rest of us would have been at