She shrewdly surmised that the knowledge of her unusual wealth
contributed to swell the number of her suitors, and she was twenty-
four years old when Lennox Dunbar, for whom she had long secretly
cherished a partiality, succeeded in placing his ring on her fair,
slender hand. In character they differed widely, and the deep and
tender love that filled her heart, found only a faint echo in his
cold and more selfish nature, which had carefully calculated all the
advantages derivable from this alliance.

He cordially admired and esteemed his brown-eyed fair-haired
fiancee, considered her the personification of feminine refinement
and delicacy; and congratulated himself warmly on his great good
fortune in winning her affection; but tender emotions found little
scope for exercise in his intensely practical, busy life, which was
devoted to the attainment of eminence in his profession; and the
merely dynamic apparatus which did duty as his heart, had never been
disturbed by any feeling sufficiently deep to quicken his calm,
steady pulse.

There were times, when Leo wondered whether all accepted lovers were
as undemonstrative as her own, and she would have been happier had
he occasionally forgotten professional aspirations, in the charm of
her presence; but her confidence in the purity and fidelity of his
affection was unshaken, even by the dismal predictions of Miss
Patty, who found it impossible to reconcile herself to the failure
of her darling scheme, that Leo should marry her second cousin,
Leighton Douglass, D.D., and devote her fortune to the advancement
of his church.