"He says that he loves me. He DOES love me.
Would he love me, if he knew?" She stood
before an oval mirror brought from France by one
of Warwick's wife's ancestors, and regarded her
image with a coldly critical eye. She was as little
vain as any of her sex who are endowed with
beauty. She tried to place herself, in thus passing
upon her own claims to consideration, in the
hostile attitude of society toward her hidden
disability. There was no mark upon her brow to
brand her as less pure, less innocent, less desirable,
less worthy to be loved, than these proud women
of the past who had admired themselves in this
old mirror.

"I think a man might love me for myself," she
murmured pathetically, "and if he loved me truly,
that he would marry me. If he would not marry
me, then it would be because he didn't love me.
I'll tell George my secret. If he leaves me, then
he does not love me."

But this resolution vanished into thin air before
it was fully formulated. The secret was not hers
alone; it involved her brother's position, to whom
she owed everything, and in less degree the future
of her little nephew, whom she had learned to love
so well. She had the choice of but two courses of
action, to marry Tryon or to dismiss him. The