ace, the grace of a young
fawn, and a pair of gentian-blue eyes that said things to people in the
first glance.

Poor, foolish, handsome Dominic Fitzgerald, light-hearted, debonair
Irish gentleman, gay and gallant on his miserable pension of a broken
and retired Guardsman, had had just sufficient sense to insist upon
magnificent settlements, certainly prompted thereto by Clementine, who
inherited the hard-headedness of the early defunct Scotch mother, as
well as her high cheek-bones. That affair had been a youthful
_mesalliance_.

"You had better see we all gain something by it, papa," she had said.
"Make the old bore give Theodora a huge allowance, and have it all fixed
and settled by law beforehand. She is such a fool about money--just like
you--she will shower it upon us; and you make him pay you a sum down as
well."

Captain Fitzgerald fortunately consulted an honest solicitor, and so
things were arranged to the satisfaction of all parties concerned except
Theodora herself, who found the whole affair far from her taste.

That one must marry a rich man if one got the chance, to help poor,
darling papa, had always been part of her creed, more or less inspired
by papa himself. But when it came to the scratch, and Josiah Brown was
offered as a husband, Theodora had had to use every bit of her nerve and
self-control to prevent herself from refusing.

She had not seen many men in her nineteen years of out-at-elbows life,
but she had imagination, and the one or two peeps at smart old friends
of papa's, landed from stray yachts now and then, at out-of-the-way
French watering-places, had given her an ideal far, far removed from the
personality of Josiah Brown.

But, as Sarah explained to her, such men could never be husbands. They
might be lovers, if one was fortunate enough to move in their sphere,
but husbands--never! and there was no use Theodora protesting this
violent devotion to darling papa, if she could not do a small thing like
marrying Josiah Brown for him!

Theodora's beautiful mother, dead in the first year of her runaway
marriage, had been the daughter of a stiff-necked, unforgiving old earl;
she had bequeathed her child, besides these gentian eyes and wonderful,
silvery blond hair, a warm, generous heart and a more or less romantic
temperament.

The heart was touched by darling papa's needs, and the romantic
temperament revolted by Josiah Brown's personality.

However, there it was! The marriage too