Madame’s heart throbbed with tender pity.  “Indeed,” she answered, warmly, “you shall have the prettiest wedding I can give you.  Your mother will come, won’t she?”

“Not if it would interfere with her lecture engagements.  She’s going to lecture all next season on ‘The Slavery of Marriage.’  She says the wedding ring is a sign of bondage, dating back to the old days when a woman was her husband’s property.”

Madame Francesca’s blue eyes filled with a sudden mist.  Slowly she turned on her finger the worn band of gold that her gallant Captain had placed there ere he went to war.  It carried still a deep remembrance too holy for speech.  “Property,” repeated the old lady, in a whisper.  “Ah, but how dear it is to be owned!”

“I don’t mind wearing it,” said Isabel, with a patronising air, “but I want it as narrow as possible, so it won’t interfere with my other rings, and, of course, I can take it off when I like.”

“Of course, but I would be glad to have you so happily married, my dear, that you wouldn’t want to take it off—­ever.”

“I’ll have to ask Mamma to send me some money for clothes,” the girl went on, half to herself.

“Don’t bother her with it,” suggested the other, kindly.  “Let me do it.  Rose and I will enjoy making pretty things for a bride.”

“I’m afraid Cousin Rose wouldn’t enjoy it,” Isabel replied, with an unpleasant laugh.  “Do you know,” she added, confidentially, “I’ve always thought Cousin Rose liked Allison—­well, a good deal.”

“She does,” returned Madame, meeting the girl’s eyes clearly, “and so do I. When you’re older, Isabel, you’ll learn to distinguish between a mere friendly interest and the grand passion.”

“She’s too old, I know,” Isabel continued, with the brutality of confident youth, “but sometimes older women do fall in love with young men.”

“Why shouldn’t they?” queried Madame, lightly, “as long as older men choose to fall in love with young women?  As far as that goes, it would be no worse for Allison to marry Rose than it is for him to marry you.”

“But,” objected Isabel, “when he is sixty, she will be seventy, and he wouldn’t care for her.”

“And,” returned Madame, rather sharply, “when he is forty, you will be only thirty and you may not care for him.  There are always two sides to everything,” she added, after a pause, “and when we get so civilised that all women may be self-supporting if they choose, we may see a little advice to husbands on the way of keeping a wife’s love, instead of the flood of nonsense that disfigures the periodicals now.”

“They all say that woman makes the home,” Isabel suggested, idly.

“But not alone.  No woman can make a home alone.  It takes two pairs of hands to make a home—­one strong and the other tender, and two true hearts.”

“I hope it won’t take too long to make my clothes,” answered Isabel, irrelevantly.  “He says I must be ready by September.”