Mr. Ogden said, “Those who know him speak very well of him.  I heard ‘Van’ Pell praise him highly at Newport last summer.  Said all the politicians thought of him as a rising man.”

“He seems a nice steady fellow,” said the mamma.  “I don’t suppose he has much practice?”

“Oh, don’t think of the money,” said Miss De Voe.  “What is that compared to getting a really fine man whom one can truly love?”

“Still, money is an essential,” said the papa.

“Yes.  But you both know what I intend to do for Dorothy and Minna.  They need not think of money.  If he and Dorothy only will care for each other!”

Peter and Dorothy did like each other.  Dorothy was very pretty, and had all the qualities which make a girl a strong magnet to men.  Peter could not help liking her.  As for Dorothy, she was like other women.  She enjoyed the talking, joking, “good-time” men in society, and chatted and danced with them with relish.  But like other women, when she thought of marriage, she did not find these gingerbread ornamentations so attractive.  The average woman loves a man, aside from his love for her, for his physical strength, and his stiff truth-telling.  The first is attractive to her because she has it not.  Far be it from man to say why the second attracts.  So Dorothy liked Peter.  She admired many qualities in him which she would not have tolerated in other men.  It is true that she laughed at him, too, for many things, but it was the laughter of that peculiar nature which implies admiration and approval, rather than the lower feelings.  When the spring separation came, Miss De Voe was really quite hopeful.

“I think things have gone very well.  Now, Mr. Stirling has promised to spend a week with me at Newport.  I shall have Dorothy there at the same time,” she told Mrs. Ogden.

Lispenard, who was present, laughed as usual.  “So you are tired of your new plaything already?”

“What do you mean?”

“Arn’t you marrying him so as to get rid of his calls and his escortage?”

“Of course not.  We shall go on just the same.”

“Bully for you, Ma.  Does Dr. Brown know it?”

Miss De Voe flushed angrily, and put an end to her call.

“What a foolish fellow Lispenard is!” she remarked unconsciously to Wellington at the carriage door.

“Beg pardon, mum?” said Wellington, blank wonderment filling his face.

“Home, Wellington,” said Miss De Voe crossly.

Peter took his week at Newport on his way back from his regular August visit to his mother.  Miss De Voe had told him casually that Dorothy would be there, and Dorothy was there.  Yet he saw wonderfully little of her.  It is true that he could have seen more if he had tried, but Peter was not used to practice finesse to win minutes and hours with a girl, and did not feel called upon, bluntly, to take such opportunities.  His stay was not so pleasant as he had expected.  He had thought a week in the same house with Miss De Voe, Dorothy and Lispenard, without much regard to other possible guests, could not but be a continual pleasure.  But he was conscious that something was amiss with his three friends.  Nor was Peter the only one who felt it.  Dorothy said to her family when she went home: