nature, the poverty of her ideals.

What should she do? She had lost Stephen and ruined his life.
Now, in order that she need not blight a second career, must she
contrive to return Claude's love! To be sure, she thought, it
seemed indecent to marry any other man than Stephen, when they
had built a house together, and chosen wall-papers, and a kitchen
stove, and dining-room chairs; but was it not the only way to
evade the difficulties?

Suppose that Stephen, in a fit of pique, should ask somebody else
to share the new cottage?

As this dreadful possibility came into view, Rose's sobs actually
frightened the birds and the squirrels. She paced back and forth
under the trees, wondering how she could have been engaged to a
man for eight months and know so little about him as she seemed
to know about Stephen Waterman to-day. Who would have believed
he could be so autocratic, so severe, so unapproachable! Who
could have foreseen that she, Rose Wiley, would ever be given up
to another man,--handed over as coolly as if she had been a
bale of cotton? She wanted to return Claude Merrill's love
because it was the only way out of the tangle; but at the moment
she almost hated him for making so much trouble, for hurting
Stephen, for abasing her in her own eyes, and, above all, for
giving her rustic lover the chance of impersonating an injured
emperor.

It did not simplify the situation to have Mite Shapley come in
during the evening and run upstairs, uninvited, to sit on the