they had meant to insinuate
that Miss Bogardus had not sufficient personal charm to attract for
herself; on the contrary, they all thought Rosalie a "handsome woman;"
but the fact still remained that she had a good deal of money, while the
young engineer had not one cent--a condition of things which they could
have pardoned, perhaps, if he had shown any activity of mind in relation
to obtaining the lacking coin. But here was where Lucian, so active
(unnecessarily) in many other matters, seemed to them singularly inert.
The truth of the case was not what the relatives supposed; money had had
nothing to do with this marriage, and love had had everything.

Rosalie had been a silent, rather dull-looking girl, with a brooding
dark eye which had a spark slumbering at the back of it; she had a
deep-seated pride which never found its outlet in speech, and she had
led always a completely repressed life among her relatives, who were
kind enough in their way, but who did not in the least understand her.
The girl had the misfortune to be an orphan. Her disposition was
reserved, jealous in the extreme; but, as is often the case with
reserved women, there was an ocean of pent-up tenderness surging below,
which made her sombre and unhappy; for indiscriminate friendship she had
no taste, while as to the more intimate ones, she had always found
herself forced, sooner or later, to share them with some one else, and
the pain her jealousies had given her upon these occasions had been so
keen that she had learned to abstain from them entirely; it was easier
to live quite alone. When, therefore, at last she believed that she was
loved, loved for herself, these long-repressed feelings burst forth;
like the released spirit of the magician's vial, they expanded and
filled her whole life, they could never be put back in their prison
again.

Five years before, Miss Bogardus had met Lucian Spenser at the White
Mountains. For a number of weeks they had been thrown together almost
daily in excursions and mountain walks, and the young engineer, with his
easy, happy temper, his wit and his kindness, had seemed to her the most
agreeable person she had ever met. There happened to be no one else
there at the moment whom Lucian cared to talk to; still, it was really
his good qualities rather than this mere accident of there being no one
else that led him on. For he had divined the unhappiness under the
pride, he could not resist the charity (as well as