allow jealousy to trouble my life.
All the same, you will not love me after your marriage as you have loved
me in the past. I shall not expect it."

Passionate denials of this assertion, reminiscences of the past,
assurances for the future followed, and Ethel accepted them without
dispute and without faith. But she understood that the mere circumstance
of her engagement was all that Dora could manage at present; and
that the details of the marriage merged themselves constantly in the
wonderful fact that Basil Stanhope loved her, and that some time, not
far off, she was going to be his wife. This joyful certainty filled her
heart and her comprehension, and she had a natural reluctance to subject
it to the details of the social and religious ceremonies necessary, Such
things permitted others to participate in her joy, and she resented the
idea. For a time she wished to keep her lover in a world where no other
thought might trouble the thought of Dora.

Ethel understood her friend's mood, and was rather relieved when her
carriage arrived. She felt that her presence was preventing Dora's
absolute surrender of herself to thoughts of her lover, and all the way
home she marveled at the girl's infatuation, and wondered if it would
be possible for her to fall into such a dotage of love for any man. She
answered this query positively--"No, if I should lose my heart, I shall
not therefore lose my head"--and then, before she could finish assuring
herself of her determinate wisdom, some mocking lines she had often
quoted to love-sick girls went laughing through her memory--

"O Woman! Woman! O our frail, frail sex!
No wonder tragedies are made from us!
Always the same--nothing but loves and cradles."

She found Ruth Bayard dressed for dinner, but her father was not
present. That was satisfactory, for he was always a little impatient
when the talk was of lovers and weddings; and just then this topic was
uppermost in Ethel's mind.

"Ruth," she said, "Dora is engaged," and then in a few sentences she
told the little romance Dora had lived for the past year, and its happy
culmination. "Setting money aside, I think he will make a very suitable
husband. What do you think, Ruth?"

"From what I know of Mr. Stanhope, I should doubt it. I am sure he
will put his duties before every earthly thing, and I am sure Dora will
object to that. Then I wonder if Dora is made on a pattern large enough
to be the moneyed partner in matrimon