and I went on--'So she told you everything in her life
was dreary?'

'Not everything but most things. And she didn't tell me so much as I
guessed it. She'll tell me more the next time. She will behave properly
now about coming in to see me; I told her she ought to.'

'I am glad of that,' I said. 'Keep her with you as much as possible.'

'I don't follow you much,' Mrs. Nettlepoint replied, 'but so far as I do
I don't think your remarks are in very good taste.'

'I'm too excited, I lose my head, cold-blooded as you think me. Doesn't
she like Mr. Porterfield?'

'Yes, that's the worst of it.'

'The worst of it?'

'He's so good--there's no fault to be found with him. Otherwise she
would have thrown it all up. It has dragged on since she was eighteen:
she became engaged to him before he went abroad to study. It was one of
those childish muddles which parents in America might prevent so much
more than they do. The thing is to insist on one's daughter's waiting,
on the engagement's being long; and then after you have got that started
to take it on every occasion as little seriously as possible--to make it
die out. You can easily tire it out. However, Mr. Porterfield has taken
it seriously for some years. He has done his part to keep it alive. She
says he adores her.'

'His part? Surely his part would have been to marry her by this time.'

'He has absolutely no money.'

'He ought to have got some, in seven years.'

'So I think she thinks. There are some sorts of poverty that are
contemptible. But he has a little more now. That's why he won't wait any
longer. His mother has come out, she has something--a little--and she is
able to help him. She will live with them and bear some of the expenses,
and after her death the son will have what there is.'

'How old is she?' I asked, cynically.

'I haven't the least idea. But it doesn't sound very inspiring. He has
not been to America since he first went out.'

'That's an odd way of adoring her.'

'I made that objection mentally, but I didn't express it to her. She met
it indeed a little by telling me that he had had other chances to
marry.'

'That surprises me,' I remarked. 'And did she say that _she_ had had?'

'No, and that's one of the things I thought nice in her; for she must
have had. She didn't try to make out that he had spoiled her life. She
has three other sisters and there is very little money at home. She has
tried to make money; she has written little th