to like the attentions of the rich and fashionable
New Yorker, enough good sense to suspect, perhaps
not definitely, what those attentions meant, but
certainly what they did not mean. Also, in the back of
her head had been an intention to refuse Stanley Baird,
if by chance he should ask her. Was there any
substance to this intention, sprung from her disliking
the conceited, self-assured snob as much as she liked
his wealth and station? Perhaps not. Who can
say? At any rate, may we not claim credit for our
good intentions--so long as, even through lack of
opportunity, we have not stultified them?

With every natural advantage apparently, Mildred's
failure to catch a husband seemed to be somehow her
own fault. Other girls, less endowed than she, were
marrying, were marrying fairly well. Why, then, was
Mildred lagging in the market?

There may have been other reasons, reasons of
accident--for, in the higher class matrimonial market,
few are called and fewer chosen. There was one reason
not accidental; Hanging Rock was no place for a girl
so superior as was Mildred Gower to find a fitting
husband. As has been hinted, Hanging Rock was one
of those upper-middle-class colonies where splurge and
social ambition dominate the community life. In such
colonies the young men are of two classes--those beneath
such a girl as Mildred, and those who had the
looks, the manners, the intelligence, and the prospects