always been, it had so happened that but few women had ever attempted to
attract him, notwithstanding his wealth and social position; and the
interested motives of those few had been so apparent that he had been
repelled and disgusted, instead of being fascinated, by their wiles; so
that Miss Nugent's grace and beauty and syren charms proved all too potent
for his unoccupied though icy heart to resist; and thus it chanced that
the day before Mr. Rutherford left Newport he astonished his hostess by
requesting a private interview with her, and therein announcing his
engagement to her governess.

"You could have knocked me down with a feather," Mrs. Archer said
afterward to an intimate friend. "I never should have suspected that such
a quiet, stupid man as he was would fall in love in that ridiculous kind
of a way. Good gracious! how indignant old Mrs. Rutherford will be! and I
shall be blamed for the whole affair, no doubt. I wish John had never
brought the man here--I never _did_ like him; and then, too, it is so
provoking to lose Miss Nugent just now, while we are at Newport. Of course
I can find no one to replace her till we return to New York. Well, I
always _was_ an unlucky little woman."

The marriage took place in the latter part of September, only a few weeks
after the engagement had been first announced. Mrs. Rutherford, true to
her resolution of making the best of the affair, was careful that none of
the usual courtesies and observances should be neglected. The bridal gifts
from the Rutherford family, if less splendid, were as numerous as they
would have been had Mr. Rutherford married a member of his mother's
decorous, high-bred "set," and all his immediate relatives called most
punctiliously on the bride when the newly-wedded pair arrived in New York
after their six weeks' trip to Philadelphia and Washington.