“Mrs. Easterfield told me.  She wrote me a letter about it, and I think her purpose was to make me thoroughly understand that I was not in this matter at all.  She did not say anything of the kind, but I think she thought it would be a dreadful thing, if by any act of mine, I should cause you to reconsider your arrangement with Professor Lancaster.  I have written to the said professor, and have told him that it is not improbable that I shall soon marry.  I don’t know yet to what lady I shall be united, but I believe in the truth of the adage, ‘that all things come to those who can not wait.’  They are in such a hurry that they take what they can get.

“If you do not think that this is a good letter, please send it back and I will write another.  What I am trying to say is, that I would sacrifice my future wife, no matter who she may be, to see you happy.  And now believe me always

    “Your most devoted acquaintance,

    “CLAUDE LOCKER.

    “P.S.—­Wouldn’t it be a glorious thing if you were to be married in
    church with all the rejected suitors as groomsmen and Lancaster as
    an old Roman conqueror with the captive princess tied behind!”

Now that all the turmoil of her life was over, and Olive at peace with herself, her thoughts dwelt with some persistency upon two of her rejected suitors.  Until now she had had but little comprehension of the love a man may feel for a woman—­perhaps because she herself never loved—­but now she looked back upon that period of her life at Broadstone with a good deal of compunction.  At that time it had seemed to her that it really made very little difference to her three lovers which one she accepted, or if she rejected them all.  But now she asked herself if it could be possible that Du Brant and Hemphill had for her anything of the feeling she now had for Dick Lancaster. (Locker did not trouble her mind at all.) If so, she had treated them with a cruel and shameful carelessness.  She had really intended to marry one of them, but not from any good and kind feeling; she was actuated solely by pique and self-interest; and she had, perhaps, sacrificed honest love to her selfishness; and, what was worse, had treated it with what certainly appeared like contempt, although she certainly had not intended that.

She felt truly sorry, and cast about in her mind for some means of reparation.  She could think of but one way:  to find for each of them a very nice girl—­a great deal nicer than herself—­and to marry them all with her blessing.  But, unfortunately for this scheme, Olive had no girl friends.  She had acquaintances “picked up here and there,” as she said, but she knew very little about any of them, and not one of them had ever struck her as being at all angelic or superior in any way.  Neither of the young men who were lying so heavily on her mind had written to any one, either at the toll-gate or at Broadstone, since the very public affair in which she had played a conspicuous part; and her consolation was that as each one had read that account he had said to himself:  “I am thankful that girl did not accept me!  What a fortunate escape!” But still she wished that she had behaved differently at Broadstone.