r a serene exterior was moved by tides of deep feeling,
subject to moods, and full of aspirations and longings which she herself
only dimly knew the meaning of. With Irene marriage would be either
supreme happiness or extreme wretchedness, no half-way acceptance of a
conventional life. With such a woman life is a failure, either tragic or
pathetic, without a great passion given and returned. It is fortunate,
considering the chances that make unions in society, that for most men
and women the "grand passion" is neither necessary nor possible. I did
not share King's prejudice against Mr. Meigs. He seemed to me, as the
world goes, a 'bon parti,' cultivated by travel and reading, well-bred,
entertaining, amiable, possessed of an ample fortune, the ideal husband
in the eyes of a prudent mother. But I used to think that if Irene,
attracted by his many admirable qualities, should become his wife, and
that if afterwards the Prince should appear and waken the slumbering
woman's heart in her, what a tragedy would ensue. I can imagine their
placid existence if the Prince should not appear, and I can well believe
that Irene and Stanhope would have many a tumultuous passage in the
passionate symphony of their lives. But, great heavens, is the ideal
marriage a Holland!

If Marion had shed any tears overnight, say on account of a little
lonesomeness because her friend was speeding away from her southward,
there were no traces of them when she met her uncle at the
breakfast-table, as bright and chatty as usual, and in as high spirits as
one can maintain with the Rodick coffee.

What a world of shifting scenes it is! Forbes had picked up his traps
and gone off with his unreasonable companion like a soldier. The day
after, when he looked out of the window of his sleeping-compartment at
half-past four, he saw the red sky of morning, and against it the spires
of Philadelphia.

At ten o'clock the two friends were breakfasting comfortably in the car,
and running along down the Cumberland Valley. What a contrast was this
rich country, warm with color and suggestive of abundance, to the pale
and scrimped coast land of Maine denuded of its trees! By afternoon they
were far down the east valley of the Shenandoah, between the Blue Ridge
and the Massanutten range, in a country broken, picturesque, fertile, so
attractive that they wondered there were so few villages on the route,
and only now and then a cheap shanty in sight; and crossing the div