CHAPTER I


ERNESTINE

She had promised to marry a scientist! It was too overwhelming a thought
to entertain standing there by the window. She sought the room's most
comfortable chair and braced herself to the situation.

If, one month before, a gossiping daughter of Fate had come to her
with--"Shall I tell you something?--_You_ are going to marry a man of
science!"--she would have smiled serenely at Fate's amusing mistake and
responded--"My good friend, it is quite true that great uncertainty
attends this subject. So much to be expected is the unexpected, that I am
quite willing to admit I _may_ marry the hurdy-gurdy man who plays
beneath my window. I know life well enough to appreciate that I _may_
marry a pawnbroker or the Sultan of Turkey. I assert but one thing. I
shall _not_ marry a 'man of science.'"

And now, not only had she promised to marry a man of science, but she had
quite overlooked the fact of his being one! And the thing which stripped
her of the last shred of consistency was that she was to marry, not the
every-day, average "man of science," but one of the foremost scientists
of all the world! The powers in charge of things matrimonial must be
smiling a quiet little smile to-night.

But ah--here was the vindication! He had not _asked_ her to marry him. He
had simply come and told her she _was_ to marry him. And he was a great,
strong man--far more powerful than she. She had had positively nothing to
do with it! Was it _her_ fault that he chanced to be engaged in