ether they wished their daughter to marry an Englishman,
and their hearts answered them, like true Republican hearts, Not an
untitled Englishman, while they saw no prospect of her getting any
other. Mrs. Pasmer philosophised the case with a clearness and a courage
which gave her husband a series of twinges analogous to the toothache,
for a man naturally shrinks from such bold realisations. She said Alice
had the beauty of a beauty, and she had the distinction of a beauty, but
she had not the principles of a beauty; there was no use pretending that
she had. For this reason the Prince of Wales's set, so accessible to
American loveliness with the courage of its convictions, was beyond her;
and the question was whether there was money enough for a younger son,
or whether, if there was, a younger son was worth it.

However this might be, there was no question but there was now less
money than there had been, and a great deal less. The investments had
not turned out as they promised; not only had dividends been passed, but
there had been permanent shrinkages. What was once an amiable competency
from the pooling of their joint resources had dwindled to a sum that
needed a careful eye both to the income and the outgo. Alice's becoming
a young lady had increased their expenses by the suddenly mounting cost
of her dresses, and of the dresses which her mother must now buy for
the different role she had to sustain in society. They began to ask
themselves what it was for, and to question whether, if she could not
marry a noble Englishman, Alice had not better marry a good American.

Even with Mrs. Pasmer this question was tacit, and it need not be
explained to any one who knows our life that in her most worldly dreams
she intended at the bottom of her heart that her daughter should marry
for love. It is the rule that Americans marry for love, and the very
rare exception that they marry for anything else; and if our divorce
courts are so busy in spite of this fact, it is perhaps because the
Americans also unmarry for love, or perhaps because love is not so
sufficient in matters of the heart as has been represented in the
literature of people who have not been able to give it so fair a
trial. But whether it is all in all in marriage, or only a very marked
essential, it is certain that Mrs. Pasmer expected her daughter's
marriage to involve it. She would have shrunk from intimating anything
else to her as from a gross indecency; and sh