o her own assertion, was one of those who enjoy
nature. "Nature and a few friends, not too many, only those whom one
trusts and who are companionable," she had said to Lord Montague.

This young gentleman had found the pursuit of courtship in America
attended by a good many incidental social luxuries. It had been a wise
policy to impress him with the charm of a society which has unlimited
millions to make it attractive. Even to an impecunious noble there is a
charm in this, although the society itself has some of the lingering
conditions of its money origin. But since the great display of the ball,
and the legitimate inferences drawn from it by the press and the
fashionable world, Mrs. Mavick had endeavored to surround her intended
son-in-law with the toils of domestic peace.

He must be made to feel at home. And this she did. Mrs. Mavick was as
admirable in the role of a domestic woman as of a woman of the world.
The simple pleasures, the confidences, the intimacies of home life
surrounded him. His own mother, the aged duchess, could not have looked
upon him with more affection, and possibly not have pampered him with so
many luxuries. There was only one thing wanting to make this home
complete. In conventional Europe the contracting parties are not the
signers of the marriage contract. In the United States the parties most
interested take the initiative in making the contract.

Here lay the difficulty of the situation, a situation that puzzled Lord
Montague and enraged Mrs. Mavick. Evelyn maintained as much indifference
to the domestic as to the worldly situation. Her mother thought her
lifeless and insensible; she even went so far as to call her unwomanly in
her indifference to what any other woman would regard as an opportunity
for a brilliant career.

Lifeless indeed she was, poor child; physically languid and scarcely able
to drag herself through the daily demands upon her strength.
Her mother made it a reproach that she was so pale and unresponsive.
Apparently she did not resist, she did everything she was told to do.
She passed, indeed, hours with Lord Montague, occasions contrived when
she was left alone in the house with him, and she made heroic efforts to
be interested, to find something in his mind that was in sympathy with
her own thoughts. With a woman's ready instinct she avoided committing
herself to his renewed proposals, sometimes covert, sometimes direct, but
the struggle tired her. At the end of a