from Slepington; take her to Saratoga, to Newport, to Washington; turn her
small head with gayety: she is pretty enough to have a dozen lovers at any
watering-place; it is only propinquity that favors Mr. Malden here."

"I can't do that, Josephine. I have not the means, and Miss Allis would
not have the will, even if she believed in your prescription."

"Then Letty must stay here and bide her time. You believe in a special
Providence, Sarah, don't you?"

"Yes, of course I do."

"Then cannot you leave her to that care? Circumstances do not work for
you. Perhaps it is best that she should marry him, suffer, live, love, and
be refined by fire."

My heart sunk at the prospect of these possibilities. Josephine put her
arm round me. "Sally," said she, in her softest tone, "I grieved you,
dear, this afternoon. I did not mean to. I grieved myself most. Please
forgive me!"

"I haven't anything to forgive, Jo," said I. "What you said to me was
true, painfully true,--and, being so, for a moment pained me. I should
have been much happier to be married, I know; but now I daren't think of
it. I have lost a great deal. I have

"--'lost _my_ place,
_My_ sweet, safe corner by the household fire,
Behind the heads of children';

"and yet I do not know that I have not gained a little. It is something,
Jo, to know that I am not in the power of a bad, or even an ill-tempered
man. I can sit by my fire and know that no one will come home to fret at
me,--that I shall encounter no cold looks, no sneers, no bursts of anger,
no snarl of stinginess, no contempt of my opinion and advice. I know that
now men treat me with respect and attention, such as their wives rarely,
if ever, receive from them. Sensitive and fastidious as I am, I do not
know whether my gain is not, to me, greater than my loss. I know it ought
not to be so,--that it argues a vicious, an unchristian, almost an
uncivilized state of society; but that does not affect the facts."

"You frighten me, Sarah. I cannot believe this is always true of men and
their wives."

"Neither is it. Some men are good and kind and gentle, gentle-men, even in
their families; and every woman believes the man she is to marry is that
exception. Jo,--bend your ear down closer,--I thought once I knew such a
man,--and,--dear,--I loved him."

"My darling!--but, Sarah, why"--

"Because, as you said, Josey, I was too old; I had seen too much; I would
not give way to an impulse. I bent my soul