familiar and much-prized quotations among her disciples, and were
acted upon the more willingly for the prestige that surrounded her
exploits as high priestess of Hymen. But Rosa had been too coy to
Alfred's evident devotion--almost repellent at seasons. Had these
rebuffs not alternated with attacks of remorse, during which the
exceeding gentleness of her demeanor gradually pried the crushed
hopes of her adorer out of the slough, and cleansed their drooping
plumes of mud, the courtship would have fallen through, ere Mrs.
Sutton could bring her skill to bear upon it. Guided, and yet
soothed by her velvet rein, Rosa really seemed to become more
steady. She was assuredly more thoughtful, and there was no better
sign of Cupid's advance upon the outworks of a girl's heart than
reverie. If her fits of musing were a shade too pensive, the
experienced eye of the observer descried no cause for discouragement
in this feature. Rosa was a spoiled, wayward child, freakish and
mischievous, to whom liberty was too dear to be resigned without a
sigh. By and by, she would wear her shackles as ornaments, like all
other sensible and loving women.

Thus preaching to Alfred, when he confided to her the fluctuations
of rapture and despair that were his lot in his intercourse with the
sometimes radiant and inviting, sometimes forbidding sprite, whose
wings he would fain bind with his embrace, and thus reassuring
herself, when perplexed by a flash of Rosa's native perverseness,
Mrs. Sutton was sanguine that all would come right in the end. What
was to be would be, and despite the rapids in their wooing, Alfred
would find in Rosa a faithful, affectionate little wife, while she
could never hope to secure a better, more indulgent, and, in most
respects, more eligible, partner than the Ayletts' well-to-do,
well-looking neighbor.