“Here you are, Mother!” Alexandra burst out joyously.  “Mother, I’ve just had the most extraordinary experience of my life!” She sat down beside the couch, her eyes dancing, her cheeks two roses, and pushed back her furs, and flung her gloves aside.  “My dear,” said Alexandra, catching up the bunch of violets she held for an ecstatic sniff, and then dropping it in her lap again, “wait until I tell you—­I’m engaged!”

“My darling girl—­” Mrs. Salisbury said, rapturously, faintly.

“To Owen, of course,” Alexandra rushed on radiantly.  “But wait until I tell you!  It’s the most awful thing I ever did in my life, in a way,” she interrupted herself to say more soberly.  Her voice died away, and her eyes grew dreamy.

Mrs. Salisbury’s heart, rising giddily to heaven on a swift rush of thanks, felt a cold check.

“How do you mean awful, dear?” she said apprehensively.

“Well, wait, and I’ll tell you,” Alexandra said, recalled and dimpling again.  “I met Jim Vance and Owen this morning at about twelve, and Jim simply got red as a beet, and vanished—­poor Jim!” The girl paid the tribute of a little sigh to the discarded suitor.  “So then Owen asked me to lunch with him—­right there in the Women’s exchange, so it was quite comme il faut, Mother,” she pursued, “and, my dear! he told me, as calmly as that!—­that he might go to New York when Jim goes—­Jim’s going to visit a lot of Eastern relatives!—­so that he, Owen I mean, could study some Eastern settlement houses and get some ideas—­”

“I think the country is going mad on this subject of settlement houses, and reforms, and hygiene!” Mrs. Salisbury said, with some sharpness.  “However, go on!”

“Well, Owen spoke to me a little about—­about Jim’s liking me, you know,” Alexandra continued.  “You know Owen can get awfully red and choky over a thing like that,” she broke off to say animatedly.  “But to-day he wasn’t—­he was just brotherly and sweet.  And, Mother, he got so confidential, you know, that I simply pulled my courage together, and I determined to talk honestly to him.  I clasped my hands—­I could see in one of the mirrors that I looked awfully nice, and that helped!—­I clasped my hands, and I looked right into his eyes, and I said, quietly, you know, ‘Owen,’ I said ’I’m going to tell you the truth.  You ask me why I don’t care for Jim; this is the reason.  I like you too much to care for any other man that way.  I don’t want you to say anything now, Owen,’ I said, ’or to think I expect you to tell me that you have always cared for me.  That’d be too Flat.  And I’m not going to say that I’ll never care for anyone else, for I’m only twenty, and I don’t know.  But I couldn’t see so much of you, Owen,’ I said, ’and not care for you, and it seems as natural to tell you so as it would for me to tell another girl.  You worry sometimes because you can’t remember your father,’ I said, ’and because your mother is so undemonstrative with you; but I want you to think, the next time you feel sort of out of it, that there is a woman who really and truly thinks that you are the best man in the world—­’”