She was a girl of strong and jealous affections, but the electric circuits in her nature were not yet established.  Then, also, she had not been a child who had made herself the heroine of her own dreams, and that had hindered her emotional development.

“Charlotte,” one of her school-mates, had asked her once, “do you ever amuse yourself by imagining that you have a lover?”

Charlotte had stared at the girl, a beautiful, early matured, innocently shameless creature.  “No,” said she.  “I don’t understand what you mean, Rosamond.”

“The next moonlight night,” said the girl, “Imagine that you have a lover.”

“What if I did?”

“It would make you very happy, almost as happy as if you had a real one,” said the girl, who was only a child in years, though, on account of her size, she had been put into long dresses.  She had far outstripped the boys of her own age, who were rather shy of her.

Charlotte, who was still in short dresses, looked at her, full of scorn and a mysterious shame.  “I don’t want any lover at all,” declared she.  “I don’t want an imaginary one, or a real one, either.  I’ve got my papa, and that’s all I want.”  At that time Charlotte still clung to her doll, and the doll was in her mind, but she did not say doll to the other girl.

“Well, I don’t care,” said the other girl, defiantly.  “You will sometime.”

“I sha’n’t, either,” declared Charlotte.  “I never shall be so silly, Rosamond Lane.”

“You will, too.”

“I never will.  You needn’t think because you are so awful silly everybody else is.”

“I ain’t any sillier than anybody else, and you’ll be just as silly yourself, so now,” said Rosamond.

After that, when Charlotte saw the child sitting sunken in a reverie with the color deepening on her cheeks, her lips pouting, and her eyes misty, she would pass indignantly.  She remembered her in after years with contempt.  She spoke of her to Ina as the silliest girl she had ever known.

Now the child’s words of prophecy, spoken from the oldest reasoning in the world, that of established sequence and precedent, did not recur to Charlotte, but she was fulfilling them.

Ina’s marriage and perhaps the natural principle of growth had brought about a change in her.  Charlotte had sat by herself and thought a good deal after Ina had gone, and naturally she thought of the possibility of her own marriage.  Ina had married; of course she might.  But her emotions were very much in abeyance to her affections, and the conditions came before the dreams were possible.

“I shall never marry anybody who will take me far away from papa!” said Charlotte.  “Perhaps I shall be less of a burden to poor papa if I am married, but I shall never go far away.”