“It is hard to make it clear—­but—­I’ll tell you my own story, so that you can understand.  Since you don’t ask questions, I will take the initiative.  That is, unless your not asking them means you are not interested?” Miss De Voe laughed in the last part of this speech.

“I should like to hear it.”

People, no matter what Peter stated, never said “Really?” “You are in earnest?” or “You really mean it?” So Miss De Voe took him at his word.

“Both my father and mother were rich before they married, and the rise in New York real estate made them in time, much richer.  They both belonged to old families.  I was the only child—­Lispenard says old families are so proud of themselves that they don’t dare to have large families for fear of making the name common.  Of course they lavished all their thought, devotion and anxiety on me.  I was not spoiled; but I was watched and tended as if I were the most precious thing the world contained.  When I grew up, and went into society, I question if I ever was a half-hour out of the sight of one or the other of my parents.  I had plenty of society, of course, but it was restricted entirely to our set.  None other was good enough for me!  My father never had any business, so brought no new element into our household.  It was old families, year in and year out!  From the moment I entered society I was sought for.  I had many suitors.  I had been brought up to fear fortune-hunting, and suspected the motives of many men.  Others did not seem my equals—­for I had been taught pride in my birth.  Those who were fit as regarded family were, many of them, unfit in brains or morals—­qualities not conspicuous in old families.  Perhaps I might have found one to love—­if it had not been for the others.  I was surrounded wherever I went and if by chance I found a pleasant man to talk to, tete-a-tete, we were interrupted by other men coming up.  Only a few even of the men whom I met could gain an entree to our house.—­They weren’t thought good enough.  If a working, serious man had ever been able to see enough of me to love me, he probably would have had very little opportunity to press his suit.  But the few men I might have cared for were frightened off by my money, or discouraged by my popularity and exclusiveness.  They did not even try.  Of course I did not understand it then.  I gloried in my success and did not see the wrong it was doing me.  I was absolutely happy at home, and really had not the slightest inducement to marry—­especially among the men I saw the most.  I led this life for six years.  Then my mother’s death put me in mourning.  When I went back into society, an almost entirely new set of men had appeared.  Those whom I had known were many of them married—­others were gone.  Society had lost its first charm to me.  So my father and I travelled three years.  We had barely returned when he died.  I did not take up my social duties again till I was thirty-two.  Then it was as the spinster aunt, as you have known me.  Now do you understand how hard it is for such a girl as Dorothy to marry rightly?”