“That means, I suppose, that you don’t want to tell me?”

“It might be taken to imply something of the sort.”

“As a matter of fact, I suppose it would be more delicate on my part not to ask you.”

“I won’t attempt to contradict you there.”

“I shouldn’t do it if I didn’t wish you were going to marry him.  I’ve wanted it a long time; but I want it more than ever now.”

“Why more than ever now?”

“Because I expect to be married before very long myself.”

“May I venture to inquire to which of the many—­”

“To none of the many.  There’s never, really, been more than one.”

“And his name—?”

“Is Carli Wappinger.”

“Oh, Dorothea!”

“That’s just it.  That’s why I want you to marry father.  I want to put a stop to the ‘Oh, Dorotheas!’ and you’re the only person in the world who can help me do it.”

“How?”

“I don’t have to tell you that.  It’s one of the reasons why I rely on you so thoroughly that you always know exactly what to do without having to receive suggestions.  I put myself in your hands entirely.”

“You mean that you’re going to marry a man to whom your father will be bitterly opposed, and you expect me to win his joyful benediction.”

“That’s about it,” Dorothea sighed, from the depth of her cushions.

“Of course, I must be grateful to you, dear, for this display of confidence; but you won’t be surprised if I find it rather overwhelming.”

“I shall be very much surprised, indeed.  I’ve never seen you find anything overwhelming yet; and you’ve been put in some difficult situations.  You only have to live things in order to make other people take them for granted.  You’ve never done anything to specially please father, and yet he listens to you as if you were an oracle.  It’s the same way with me.  If any one had told me two years ago that I should ever come to praying for a stepmother I should have thought them crazy; and yet I have come to it, just because it’s you.”

After that it was not unnatural that Diane should go and sit on the divan beside Dorothea for any exchange of such confidences as could not be conveniently made from a distance.  If she admitted anything on her own part, it was by implication rather than by direct assertion, and though she did not promise in words to come to the aid of the youthful lovers, she allowed the possibility that she would do so to be assumed.

So, in soft, whispered, broken confessions the evening slipped away more rapidly than the day had done, and by ten o’clock they knew he must be near.  The last touch of welcome came when they passed from room to room, lighting up the big house in cheerful readiness for its lord’s inspection.  When all was done Dorothea stationed herself at a window near the street; while Diane, with a curious shrinking from what she had to face, took her seat in the remotest and obscurest corner in the more distant of the two drawingrooms.  When the sound of wheels, followed by a loud ring at the bell, told her that he was actually at the door, she felt faint from the violence of her heart’s beating.