"Oh well, if you feel so, there is nothing more to be said. I can
tell you, though, that multitudes of girls would be glad of your
chance; but, like so many young people, you have romantic ideas,
and do not appreciate the fact that happiness results chiefly from
the conditions of our lot, and that we soon learn to have plenty
of affection for those who make them all we could desire;" and she
touched a bell for the waitress, who had been temporarily dismissed.

The girl came in with a faint smile on her face. "Has she been
listening?" thought Marian. "That creature, then, with her vain,
pretty, yet vulgar face, is the type of what I was. She has been
lighting the drawing-room for me to do what she proposes to do
later in the evening. She looks just the same. Mamma is just the
same. Callers will come just the same. How unchanged all is, as
papa said it would be! I fear much may be unchangeable."

She soon left the dining-room for the parlor, her dainty, merry
little campaigning-ground. What should be its future record? Could
she carry out the scheme of life which her father had suggested?
"Well," she concluded, with an ominous flash in her eyes at her fair
reflection in the mirror, "whether I can incite any one to better
things or not, I can at least do some freezing out. That gossipy,
selfish old Mr. Lanniere must take his million to some other market.
I have no room in my life for him. Neither do I dote on the future
acquaintance of Mr. Strahan. I shall put him on probation. If men
don't want my society and regard on the new conditions, they can
stay away; if they persist in coming, they must do something finer
and be something finer than in the past. The friendship of one man
like Fenton Lane is worth more than the attention of a wilderness
of muffs and sticks, as papa calls them. What I fear is that I shall