These were the love-words of an “enthusiast”—­these—–­

The vision vanished at the short, hard breath, she drew in unclasping her locked hands, and lifting her grave, tranquil eyes to the level of her suitor’s.

“I will follow your example in repudiating spurious sentiment, Mr. Dorrance.  I believe you to be a good, true man and that the attachment you profess for me is sincere.  I believe, moreover, that my chances of securing real peace of mind will be fairer, should I commit myself to your guardianship, than if I were to surrender my affections to the keeping of one whose vows were more impassioned, who, professing to adore me as a divinity, should yet be destitute of your high moral principle and stainless honor.  When I was younger and more rash in judgment and feeling, I was led into a sad mistake by the evidence of eye, ear, and a girl’s imagination.  I ought to tell you this, if you have not already heard the story.  I will not deceive you into the persuasion that I can ever feel for you, or any other man, the love, or what I thought was love, I knew in the few brief weeks of my early betrothal.  But you must know how that ended, and I have no desire to repeat the mad experiment of risking my earthly all upon one throw of fate.  If friendship—­if esteem, and the resolve to show myself a worthy recipient of your generous confidence—­will content you, all else shall be as you wish.”

In her determination to be candid, to leave him in no uncertainty as to her actual sentiments, she had concerted a response but a degree less stilted than his proposal.  She would have been ashamed of it had he appeared less gratified.

His dull eyes brightened; his face flushed and beamed with unfeigned delight, and in his transport he said the most natural and graceful thing that ever escaped him during his wooing.

“I am content!  The second love of Mabel Aylett must ever be more to me than the first of any other woman!”

True, he nearly spoiled all the next minute, by producing from his pocket a wee velvet case, from which he extracted a valuable diamond ring, and proceeded, then and there, in the shadow of the accommodating curtain, to fit it upon her finger.  He had foreseen that she would not be hardly won, and with characteristic providence had prepared himself for the event.

The blood leaped to Mabel’s temples and the fire to her eye, at the prompt seal set by the practical non-enthusiast upon the contract, but she bit her lip, and submitted after a second of thought.  He owed his exemption from rebuke to her memory of his latest utterance.  She could not mistake the tone of genuine feeling, and she overlooked the breach of taste that followed; treasured up the heart-saying as one of the few souvenirs she cared to preserve of his courtship.

“If he is content, I need not be miserable,” was the consolatory reflection with which she took upon herself her new and binding obligations.