fine lady ye were, with such a
family and such a bringin' up. And now ye've married a rich man, as is
right and proper. If it's rich as Croesus he was, he'd be none too good
for you."

"Catherine," said Aunt Mary, reprovingly, "what ideas you put into the
child's head!"

"Sure, Miss Mary," cried Catherine, "it's always the great lady she was,
and she a wee bit of a thing. And wasn't it yerself, Miss Mary, that
dressed her like a princess?"

Then came the good-bys--the real ones. Uncle Tom, always the friend of
young people, was surrounded by a group of bridesmaids in the hall. She
clung to him. And Peter, who had the carriage ready. What would her
wedding have been without Peter? As they drove towards the station, his
was the image that remained persistently in her mind, bareheaded on the
sidewalk in the light of the carriage lamps. The image of struggle.

She had married Prosperity. A whimsical question, that shocked her,
irresistibly presented itself: was it not Prosperity that she had
promised to love, honour, and obey?

It must not be thought that Honora was by any means discontented with her
Prosperity. He was new--that was all. Howard looked new. But she
remembered that he had always looked new; such was one of his greatest
charms. In the long summer days since she had bade him good-by on her way
through New York from Silverdale, Honora had constructed him: he was
perpetual yet sophisticated Youth; he was Finance and Fashion; he was
Power in correctly cut clothes. And when he had arrived in St. Louis to
play his part in the wedding festivities, she had found her swan a swan
indeed--he was all that she had dreamed of him. And she had tingled with
pride as she introduced him to her friends, or gazed at him across the
flower-laden table as he sat beside Edith Hanbury at the bridesmaids'
dinner in Wayland Square.

The wedding ceremony had somehow upset her opinion of him, but Honora
regarded this change as temporary. Julius Caesar or George Washington
himself must have been somewhat ridiculous as bridegrooms: and she had
the sense to perceive that her own agitations as a bride were partly
responsible. No matter how much a young girl may have trifled with that
electric force in the male sex known as the grand passion, she shrinks
from surrendering herself to its dominion. Honora shrank. He made love to
her on the way to the station, and she was terrified. He actually forgot
to smoke cigarettes. What he said was