we were compelled at a moment's notice to marry each other or
forfeit a dazzling fortune."

"Why could you not divide it?"

"Because the lawyers said we couldn't. Lawyers are always aggressive.
My great-uncle had particularly declared it should not be divided. It
was to be all or none, and whichever of us refused to marry the other
got nothing. And there was so much!" says her ladyship, with an
expressive sigh.

"It was a hard case," Molly says, with deep sympathy.

"It was. Yet, as I managed it, it wasn't half so bad. Now, I dare say
many women would have gone into violent hysterics, would have driven
their relations to the verge of despair and the shivering bridegroom to
the brink of delirious joy, and then given in,--married the man, lived
with him, and been miserable ever after. But not I."

Here she pauses, charmed at her own superior wisdom, and, leaning back
in her chair, with a contented smile, puts the tips of her fingers
together daintily.

"Well, and you?" says Molly, feeling intensely interested.

"I? I just reviewed the case calmly. I saw it was a great deal of
money,--too much to hesitate about,--too much also to make it likely a
man would dream of resigning it for the sake of a woman more or less.
So I wrote to my cousin explaining that, as we had never known each
other, there could be very little love lost between us, and that I saw
no necessity why we ever _should_ know each other,--and that I was
quite willing to marry him, and take a third of the money, if he would
allow me to be as little to him in the future as I was in the present,
by drawing up a formal deed of separation, to be put in force at the
church-door, or the door of any room where the marriage ceremony should
be performed."

"Well?"

"Well, I don't know how it would have been but that, to aid my request,
I inclosed a photograph of our parlormaid (one of the ugliest women it
has ever been my misfortune to see), got up in her best black silk,
minus the cap, and with a flaming gold chain round her neck,--you know
the sort of thing,--and I never said who it was."

"Oh, Cecil, how could you?"

"How couldn't I? you mean. And, after all, my crime was of the passive
order; I merely sent the picture, without saying anything. How could I
help it if he mistook me for Mary Jane? Besides, I was fighting for
dear life, and all is fair in love and war. I could not put up with the
whims and caprices of a man to whom I was indifferent."