brought its
suggestion of pain, with the wearying iterancy of habit, no matter how
she wanted to be happy.

Dosia dropped half-unwillingly into a chair as she said:

"I've something to tell you, Lois."

"Well?"

"I'm engaged to George Sutton."

"Dosia!"

Lois' work fell from her hand as she stared at the girl.

"I'm sure I don't see that you need be surprised," said Dosia. She
looked pale and expressionless, as one who did not expect either
sympathy or interest.

"No, I suppose not," said Lois. "Of course, I know he has been paying
you a great deal of attention, but then, he has paid other girls
almost as much." She stopped, with her eyes fixed on Dosia. In a
sense, she had rather hoped for this; the marriage would certainly
solve many difficulties, and be a very fine thing for Dosia--if Dosia
could----! Yet now the idea revolted Lois. To marry a man without
loving him would have been to her, at any time or under any stress, a
physical impossibility. Marriage for friendship or suitability or
support were outside her scheme of comprehension. She spoke now with
cold disapproval:

"Dosia, you don't know what you are doing. You don't love George
Sutton."

Dosia's face took on the well-known obstinate expression.

"He loves me, anyhow, and he is satisfied with me as I am. If he is
satisfied, I don't see why any one else need object! He likes me just
as I am, whether I care for him or not."

She clasped both hands over her knee as she went on with that
unexplainable freakishness to which girlhood is sometimes maddeningly
subject, when all feeling as well as reason seems in abeyance, though
her voice was tremulous. "And I _do_ care for him. I like him better
than any one I know. We are sympathetic on a great many points. No
one--_no one_ has been so kind to me as he! He doesn't want anything
but to make me happy."

Lois made a gesture of despair. "Oh, _kind_! As if a man like George
Sutton, who has done nothing but have his own way for forty years, is
going to give up wanting it now! Marriage is very different from what
girls imagine, Dosia."

"I suppose so," said Dosia indifferently. She rose and came over to
Lois. "Would you like to see my ring?" She turned the circle around on
her finger, displaying a diamond like a search-light. "He gave it to
me last night."

"It is very handsome," said Lois. "I suppose you will have to be
thinking of clothes soon," she added, with a glimmer of the natural
feminine