ly anticipative
solicitude of the boyish groom, contrasting it now and then with Ormsby's
less obtrusive attentions. It was all very absurd and sentimental, she
thought; and yet she was not without a curious heart-stirring of envy
provoked by the self-satisfied complacency of the bride.

What had that chit of a girl done to earn her immunity from
self-defendings and the petty anxieties? Nothing, Elinor decided; at
least, nothing more purposeful than the swimmer does when he lets himself
drift with the current. None the less, the immunity was hers, undeniably,
palpably. For the first time in her life Miss Brentwood found herself
looking, with a little shudder of withdrawal and dismay, down the possible
vista--possible to every unmarried woman of twenty-four--milestoned by
unbroken years of spinsterhood and self-helpings.

Was she strong enough to walk this hedged-up path alone?--single-hearted
enough to go on holding out against her mother's urgings, against Ormsby's
masterful wooing, against her own unconquerable longing for a sure
anchorage in some safe haven of manful care and supervision; all this that
she might continue to preserve her independence and live the life which,
despite its drawbacks, was yet her own?

There were times when she doubted her resolution; and this first night of
the westward journey was one of them. She had thought at one time that she
might be able to idealize David Kent, but he had gone his way to hew out
his fortune, taking her upstirrings of his ambition in a purely literal
and selfish sense, so far as she could determine. And now there was
Brookes Ormsby. She could by no possibility idealize him. He was a fixed
fact, stubbornly asserted. Yet he was a great-hearted gentleman, unspoiled
by his millions, thoughtful always for her comfort, generous,
self-effacing. Just now, for example, when he had done all, he had seemed
to divine her wish to be alone and had betaken himself to the
smoking-compartment.

"I promised not to bore you," he had said, "and I sha'n't. Send the porter
after me if there is anything I have forgotten to do."

She took up the magazine he had left on the seat beside her and sought to
put away the disquieting thoughts. But they refused to be dismissed; and
now among them rose up another, dating back to that idealizing summer at
the foot of Old Croydon, and having its genesis in a hard saying of her
mother's.

She closed her eyes, recalling the words and the occasio