obedient children. It was an honor to be selected--so she thought. A
sacrifice--so considered by the unselected.

Gerome had for me somewhat of a circumstantial love. We had always known
one another. We had been constantly thrown together. It would have been
a pre-eminently proper arrangement. It would have been the alliance of
the two influential and wealthy families. Therefore, his mother wished
it and ordered it to be so. But an unexpected disappointment awaited her
honorable ladyship. It had not occurred to her that a woman could be so
foolish, so neglectful of her own interests and of her own happiness,
as to refuse in marriage the hand of her precious son. My evident
hesitation--for at heart I loved him--surprised and somewhat alarmed
her. I was invited to dine with the family. I was treated as a
prospective member. With the soup, the fish, and the heavy meats, they
dealt out the virtues of their Gerome, seriously and earnestly. With the
sweetmeats and the coffee they smilingly touched upon his lightest and
most pardonable faults. My heart trembled for its safety. It was a well
planned effective process. That night he told me of his love with the
air of a man who fully expects a warm response and affirmative answer.
Both were bravely denied him. I told him that he was mistaken; I told
him he did not, and never would, have for me the grand passion of his
life. He said--what else could he say?--"You are wrong; you deeply wrong
me. You are plunging my young life, hitherto so full of hope, down into
a depth of bitterness and regret from which it may never rise again!"
This was said in a tragic, somewhat stilted, but impressive manner. I
was touched; it was my first experience; it was the first time that I
had ever heard a man talk about his broken, blasted hopes and his empty,
ruined life. But it is all a very old story now. I know just how much to
believe--in truth, precious little. Nothing dulls the edge of a woman's
sensibilities more quickly than frequent proposals. His rejection was a