Mrs. Maynard fully shared the opinion which rocked Dr. Mulbridge’s defeat with a belief in his invincible will.  When it became necessary, in the course of events which made Grace and Libby resolve upon a short engagement, to tell her that they were going to be married, she expressed a frank astonishment.  “Walter Libby!” she cried.  “Well, I am surprised.  When I was talking to you the other day about getting married, of course I supposed it was going to be Dr. Mulbridge.  I did n’t want you to marry him, but I thought you were going to.”

“And why,” demanded Grace, with mounting sensation, “did you think that?”

“Oh, I thought you would have to.”

“Have to?”

“Oh, you have such a weak will.  Or I always thought you had.  But perhaps it’s only a weak will with other women.  I don’t know!  But Walter Libby!  I knew he was perfectly gone upon you, and I told you so at the beginning; but I never dreamt of your caring for him.  Why, it seems too ridiculous.”

“Indeed!  I’m glad that it amuses you.”

“Oh no, you’re not, Grace.  But you know what I mean.  He seems so much younger.”

“Younger?  He’s half a year older than I am.”

“I did n’t say he was younger.  But you’re so very grave and he’s so very light.  Well, I always told Walter Libby I should get him a wife, but you were the last person I should have thought of.  What’s going to become of all your high purposes?  You can’t do anything with them when you’re married!  But you won’t have any occasion for them, that’s one comfort.”

“It’s not my idea of marriage that any high purpose will be lost in it.”

“Oh, it is n’t anybody’s, before they get married.  I had such high purposes I couldn’t rest.  I felt like hiring a hall, as George says, all the time.  Walter Libby is n’t going to let you practise, is he?  You mustn’t let him!  I know he’d be willing to do anything you said, but a husband ought to be something more than a mere & Co.”

Grace laughed at the impudent cynicism of all this, for she was too happy to be vexed with any one just then.  “I’m, glad you’ve come to think so well of husbands’ rights at last, Louise,” she said.

Mrs. Maynard took the little puncture in good part.  “Oh, yes, George and I have had a good deal of light let in on us.  I don’t suppose my character was much changed outwardly in my sickness,” she suggested.

“It was not,” answered Grace warmly.  “It was intensified, that was all.”

Mrs. Maynard laughed in her turn, with real enjoyment of the conception.  “Well, I wasn’t going to let on, unless it came to the worst; I did n’t say much, but I kept up an awful thinking.  It would have been easy enough to get a divorce, and George would n’t have opposed it; but I looked at it in this way:  that the divorce wouldn’t have put us back where we were, anyway, as I had supposed it would.  We had broken into each other’s lives, and we couldn’t get out again, with all