flower in an old earthen pot," she added quaintly. "Now the pot has
tinsel and tissue paper round it, but until to-night I have felt as if I
might just as well be an old cabbage."

But it had been heaven to dance with a young man who was not a cousin;
and to sit out alone with him in the moonlight, Oh, _grace à Dieu_!

Traveling she had read modern novels for the first time. There were many
in the ship's library, oh, but dozens! and she knew now how American and
English girls enjoyed life. Her mother had been ill nearly all the way
over. She had given her word not to speak to any one, but maman had been
ignorant of the library replete with the novelists of the day, and
although she was not untruthful, _enfin_, she saw no reason to ask her
too anxious parent for another prohibition and condemn herself to yawn
at the sea.

Ruyler proposed at the end of a week. She was the only really innocent,
unspoiled, unselfconscious girl he had ever met, almost as old-fashioned
as his great grandmother must have been. Not that he set forth her
virtues to bolster his determination to marry a girl of no family even in
her own country; he was madly in love, and life without her was
unthinkable; but he tabulated the thousand points to her credit for the
benefit of his outraged father.

He did not pretend to like Madame Delano. She was a hard, calculating,
sordid old bourgeoisie, but when he refused the little _dot_ she would
have settled upon Hélène, he knew that he had won her friendship and that
she would give him no trouble. She was not a mother-in-law to be ashamed
of, for her manners were coldly correct, her education in youth had
evidently been adequate, and in her obese way she was imposing. She gave