Why should she affect diffidence, or seek to escape what she had
foreseen for weeks, and made no effort to ward off? She had come to
the conclusion in October that Herbert Dorrance would, when the
forms he considered indispensable to regular courtship had been gone
through with, ask her to marry him, and coolly taken her resolution
to accept him. This morning, on the reception of a handsome
Christmas gift from him, and discovering in his actions something
more pointed than his customary punctilious devoirs, and in his
didacticism the outermost of the closing circle of pursuit she had
furthermore concluded that his happy thought was to celebrate the
festal season by his betrothment. She was quite ready for the
declaration, which, she anticipated, would be pompous and formal.
She would have excused him from "doing" the poetical part of it;
but, since it was on the programme, it was not her province to
interfere.

"I am no enthusiast," he next averred,--Rosa would have said, very
unnecessarily--"the tricks of sighing lovers are beyond--or
beneath--my imitation. I could not 'write a sonnet to my mistress'
eyebrow,' or move her to tearful pity by sounding declarations of my
adoration of her peerless charms, and my anguish at the bare
imagination of the possibility that these would ever be another's.
But, so far as the earnest affection and sincere esteem of an honest
man can satisfy the requirements of a good woman's heart, yours
shall be filled, Mabel, if you will be my wife. I have admired you
from the first day of our meeting. For six months I have been truly
attached to you, and seriously meditated this declaration. Your
brother is satisfied with the exhibit I have made of my affairs and
my prospects, and sanctions my addresses. I can maintain you more