Of Happiness continuing, and what all the World loves;
revealing, however, that not Every Girl can do what the
French People once did.
The row of maiden's testimonials had received their crowning complement.
The beginning at the Beach had touched its shining end. As she and mamma
had planned it, so it had magically fallen out.
When Mrs. Heth heard the tidings (which she did within three minutes of
Carlisle's arrival at home) the good lady hardly restrained the tears of
jubilee. Having all but abandoned hope, she was swept off her feet by
the overwhelming revulsion of feeling, and her attitude--for of course
mamma always produced an attitude about everything upon the spot--was
not merely ecstatic, but tender and magnanimously humble. For it was
clear now that the daughter had outpointed the mother at the Great Game;
Cally had justified her flare-up; and Mrs. Heth, with eyes nobly moist,
begged forgiveness for all the hibernal harshnesses.
"You must make allowances for the natural anxieties of a loving mother's
heart," said she, in the first transports.... "You've done me so proud,
dear little daughter. _Proud_!... How Society will open its eyes!..."
"So he is coming to dinner with us!" she added a moment later, exulting
with her eyes. "He will speak to your father then.... It's not too late
to add a course or two. And we must have out the gold coffee-set...."
Canning dined in state at the House that night, with coffee from the
gold set. Next evening, there were similar ceremonies. Accompanying
Carlisle homeward on the day following their re-meeting, Canning had
meant to return at once to New York; for his long furlough had now run
out, and he had felt a man's call of duty upon him. Moreover, it was
already arranged that he should come again for a real betrothal visit,
sometime before the first of May. Yet he lingered on for four days now,
a man magnetized beyond his own control. Radiant days were these.
In view of Carlisle's desire that her news should not tamely leak out,
depriving the Announcement of its due _éclat_, some little discretion
was of course necessary at this period: else people would talk and say
afterwards that they knew it all along. She saw that she must still make
engagements which did not include her betrothed; she must meet the
archnesses of her little world with blank looks above the music in her
heart, with many evasions, and even, perhaps, a harmless fib or two.
Nevertheless, the lovers secured many hours all to themselves. Shut from
public view in Mr. Heth's study, and more especially in long motor rides
down unfrequented by-lanes they were deep in the absorptions of
exploring each other, of revealing themselves each to each. And to
Carlisle these hours, marked upon their faces with the first fresh
wonder of her conquest, were dazzling beyond description.
Spring was coming early this year, slipping in on light bright feet. And
in the House of Heth there was felt a vernal exuberance, indeed:
permeating papa even, extending to the very servants. Mr. Heth had
received the news of the great event with profound satisfaction,
asserting unequivocally that Canning was the finest young man he had
ever seen. And yet, unlike mamma, his joy was tempered with a certain
genuine emotion at the prospect of so soon losing the apple of his eye.
"You know the old rhyme, Cally," said he, pinching her little
ear--"'Your son's your son all his life, but your daughter's your
daughter _till_ she becomes a wife.'... Don't let it be that way, my
dear. You're all the son your old father's got...."
As to mamma, her feet remained in the clouds, but her head grew
increasingly practical. She had been rather opposed to postponing the
announcement, being ever one for the bird in the hand; but she had
yielded with good grace, and within the hour was efficiently planning
the "biggest" wedding, and the costliest wedding-reception, ever given
in that town. By the second day she was giving intelligent thought to
the trousseau--every stitch should be bought in Paris, except a few of
the plainer things, in New York--and had finally decided that the
refreshments at the reception should be "by Sherry." People should
remember that reception so long as they all did live.
"All the Canning connection shall come," she cried,--"rely on me to get
them here,--and all the most fashionable and exclusive people in the
State. Every last one of them," said she, "except Mary Page."
After an interval, during which she sat with a glitter in her eye, she
added explosively:
"_I'll_ show her whether I'm probable!"
The remark, it seemed, had rankled even in the moment of supreme
victory....
Spring, too, it became, the quintessence of spring, in the young
maiden's heart. Nature but symbolized the brilliant new life
henceforward to be her own. And the more she came to discern her lover
against his background of wealth, place, and power, the more she saw how
brilliant that life was to be, the more she thrilled with the magnitude
of her own accomplishment. Of himself in their new relation, Canning
talked much in these days, and with an unaffected earnestness: of the
high nature of the career they would make together; of his own honors
and large responsibilities to come; in chief of his family, whose name
it would be their pride to uphold through the years ahead. And the
girl's heart warmed as she listened. What was all the storied dignity of
the Cannings now but so much sweet myrrh and frankincense upon her own
girlish altar?...
He was her maiden's ideal. He was her prince from a story-book, come
true. If any flaw were conceivable in so complete a fulfilment, it might
have been imagined only in this very fact of Hugo's all-perfectness.
Marrying upward, in the nature of the case, involved a large material
one-sidedness: that was the object and the glory of it all. Yet now, in
her romantic situation, there woke new emotions in Cally Heth, and she
dimly perceived that her lifelong ambition carried, through its very
advantages, a subtle disadvantage to the heart. Unsuspected tendernesses
seemed to stir within her, and she was aware of the vague wish to
bestow upon her lover, to make him a full gift for a gift. However, it
was clear that Canning had everything. For the priceless boons he was to
confer upon her, she saw that she had nothing to give him in return,
except herself.
With this return, Canning, for his part, seemed amply content. When the
hour came when, for his manhood, he must report himself again to that
office in New York which had not known his face since October, he took
the parting hard. He was to return again before April was out, for a
fortnight's stay preceding his betrothed's departure for Europe; yet he
seemed hardly able to tear himself away....
"I hope we shall have a long life together," said he, a bright gleam in
his handsome eyes, "but it's certain, my own dear, that we'll never be
engaged but once...."
Moved herself by the farewells, she teasingly reminded him of his
one-time impatience to fly back to lights and home. But Canning,
straining her to his heart, replied that home was where the heart is,
and was admitted to have the best of the argument.
* * * * *
Carlisle's world had been knocked far out of its ordered orbit. Hugo
Canning, possessed by her, was so towering a fact that it threw the
whole horizon into a new perspective. Between this shining state and the
winter of discontent, there was no imaginable connection. Cause and
effect must turn a new page, life's continuity start afresh.
So it seemed, in love's first bloom. And yet, circumstances being as
they were, it was hardly possible that Carlisle should at one stroke
completely cut herself off from the past, as Florrie Willing constantly
did, as the French people once did, by means of their well-known
Revolution.
In Hugo's absence (full as the days were with questions of the
trousseau, rendered doubly exciting by mamma's princely attitude toward
expense), Carlisle began to recognize once more the landmarks of her
former environment. Doubtless a certain period of emotional reaction was
inevitable, and with it the reassociation of ideas began. Canning was
away a solid month. One day soon after his return,--it was on a lovely
afternoon in early May, as they were motoring homeward after four hours'
delightful _tête-à-tête_ in Canning's own car,--Carlisle said to him:
"Oh, Hugo, what do you think I did while you were away? Subscribed a
hundred dollars to a Settlement House! My own money, too,--not papa's
at all!"
Hugo, whose intensity of interest in his betrothed seemed only to have
increased during the days of absence, cried out at her munificence.
"So, you've money, in those terms--well!" said he. "Aren't you mortally
afraid of being gobbled up by a fortune-hunter some fine day?"
"A _great_ many people have warned me about that--mentioning you
specially, by the way. But I've always told them that you loved me for
my fair face alone."
Canning made a lover's remark, a thoroughly satisfactory one.
"But don't you see," he added, "this business of your having money
changes everything. I must double my working hours, I suppose! I'm too
proud a man to be dependent on my wealthy wife for support."
"I'm glad to know you may be prosperous, too, some day, Hugo," said she;
and, after a little more frivolous talk: "Did I mention that I'm
soliciting subscriptions from visiting men for that Settlement I
spoke of?"
"Great heavens!" cried Canning, amused. "Why, don't you think a Hundred
Dollars is more than sufficient--for one little family?"
"They wouldn't say so," said Carlisle, laughing and coloring a little,
"for they're asking for twenty-five thousand dollars and have raised
about two so far. What could be more pitiful than that?"
Canning, who was driving his car to-day, as he occasionally liked to do,
then asked, why was a Settlement? And as well as she could Carlisle
retailed her rather sketchy information: how "they" planned to buy the
deserted Dabney House, make it the headquarters for all the organized
charities of the city, and use the rest of the great pile for
working-men's clubs, night classes, lodgings, gymnasiums and so forth.
Thanks to the influence of Rev. Mr. Dayne, Mrs. Heth had been induced to
lend her name as a member of the Settlement Association's organization
committee. But it was from her cousin Henrietta Cooney that Carlisle had
got most of her facts, at a recent coming-to-supper while Hugo was away.
Canning, listening, was glancing about him. Having made an adventurous
run to-day by way of the old Spring Tavern,--he had plotted it out
himself, with maps and blue-books,--they had reëntered the city by the
back door as it were, and now spun over unaccustomed streets.
"I didn't know you went in for charity, my dear."
"Oh, a cousin of mine is drumming up funds for this, you see...."
Not clearly understanding it herself, how could she explain the impulse
which had led her to offer Hen, without being dunned at all, her royal
subscription? Perhaps she had a vague feeling that this would prove, to
the complete satisfaction of the public, that she and her family were
far from being shameless homicides, dead to all benevolent works. It
appeared that mamma had already subscribed fifteen dollars to the
Settlement, on personal solicitation of Mr. Dayne, but of course you
could not prove anything much for fifteen dollars.
Hugo, having turned to look at Carlisle, lost interest in Settlements.
His gaze became fixed, and it said, plainer than ardent print, that, if
he had many possessions, here was far the best and dearest of them....
"Where's that ripping little hat you wore yesterday? You know--a brown
one, sort of a toque, I suppose--all old rose inside?"
"Why, Hugo!... Don't you like this hat _extremely_?"
"Rather! Only, if there is a choice, I do think I'd vote for the
toque.... You've gone and spoiled me by giving away how you can look
when you try."
Carlisle laughed merrily. She was glad to have her lover so observant of
what she wore, even though he did not know nearly so much about clothes
as he imagined.
"It's not a toque at all," said she, "but I'll wear it for you
to-morrow, provided you promise me now to run away from that tiresome
secretary and come to lunch."
"Done! At one-thirty o'clock."
"That's the exact luncheon hour, as it happens, but I notice that many
of the best fiancés make it a practice to report for duty at least half
an hour before the gong. It _looks_ so much better."
"Running and eating's no better than eating and running, you allege.
There's some small merit in the contention.... What of those sterling
fiancés who punch the time-clock a full hour before the whistle?"
"Oh, dear me, Hugo, are there any like that?"
"There's but one now in captivity, I believe. I--Hello!... Missed him,
by Jove!"
"What was it? A cat?"
"Didn't you see? Our old hoodoo--that camp-meeting chap!..."
"Oh!"
"I wonder what ill wind he's blowing this time.... Poetic justice if I'd
knocked him into the middle of next week."
Carlisle had involuntarily looked back, struck with a sense of
coincidence, and also with the odd feeling of having received a douche
of cold water. They were, it seemed, rolling along through old South
Street, and behind her, sure enough, she saw the looming shape of the
ancient hotel, which the Settlement Association could have for
twenty-five thousand dollars cash. Of the "camp-meeting chap," however,
she saw nothing: presumably, having evaded justice, he had already
disappeared into his lair. Nevertheless she was effectually reminded
that this man was still in the world.
"Is this where the fellow lives?" said Canning, also glancing back down
the dingy street. "I thought somebody said he'd come into money from his
lamented uncle."
She confirmed the conjecture, and Hugo then observed:
"Well, I'll give him a month to discover that it's his duty to God to
remove to a more fashionable neighborhood."
"Oh! Do you think so?"
"Have you ever known one of these smooth religious fellows who wasn't
keen after the fleshpots when his chance came?"
Carlisle laughed and said she hadn't, having indeed known few religious
fellows of any kind in her young life. But she was struck with this new
proof of Hugo's essential congeniality with her. His penetrating
comment, born, it seemed, of that curious antipathy which she had
noticed before, fell in astonishingly with trends of her own.
Many weeks had passed since Carlisle had decided to oust this religious
fellow definitely from her thoughts, as belonging so clearly to that
past upon which she had now turned a victorious back. And in these
expulsive processes, she had found herself greatly assisted by the young
man's confession of hypocrisy, as she regarded it, on this very subject
of giving away money. Perhaps this had seemed a frail club once; she
herself had hardly put much strength in it in the beginning; but she had
been resolute, and time had strengthened her convincingly, according to
her need. For if the man was a whited sepulchre, full of dead men's
bones within, then clearly his opinions of people and their families
were not of the slightest importance to anybody, so what was the good of
anybody's thinking of them?...
Not to let the conversation lag, she had remarked, with no pause at all:
"It's strange our nearly running over him, just then and there. That old
shack is the Dabney House, and you know it's he who got up the
Settlement idea."
"No, I didn't know it," said Canning, slowing down to take a corner
which led on to civilization. "Still," he added, "I shan't let that stay
my generosity. I resolved three blocks back to subscribe five
hundred--just to throw you in the shade--and I will not be deterred."
Having been duly applauded for his prodigality, he inquired: "How much,
by the way, is the good doctor donating out of his forty thousand?"
"Not a cent!" said Carlisle, who had questioned Hen on this very point.
It was thus, indeed, that circumstances had given demolishing weight to
her club. "If I had money I'd probably hang on to every cent," the man
had said, that winter morning on his uncle's doorstep; and now he had
money, a lot of it, and hanging on he undoubtedly was. Hen herself had
confessed it, with a certain defiance, trying to create the impression
that the man was merely reserving his funds for some other good
purpose....
The triumphant ring in Carlisle's voice might have struck Canning as
odd, if he had happened to notice it. Still more obscure, however, were
the inner processes which led him to say:
"Does he make any charge for the thought?... Well, it's a fine thought,
all the same; a fine work. On reconsideration I raise my subscription to
a thousand. Hang the expense!..."
There was another gay burst of felicitation, after which Carlisle became
somewhat silent. Canning, bowling proficiently up Washington Street,
spoke of his honored maternal grandmother, the great lady Mrs. Theodore
Spencer, and her famous Brookline home. Beside him, Carlisle, listening
with one ear only, considered the strangeness of life. Transfigured
within, she had seemed to look out upon a new universe, yet was not this
somehow the face of an old familiar, slyly peeping? Of what use, then,
were clubs? When were things _ever_ settled, if she could be conscious
of a little cloud no larger than a man's hand even now, with the living
guarantee of her omnipotence at her side?...
"Who was that?" said Canning, suspending conversation to bow, with
Carlisle, to a passing female pedestrian.
"Oh," she laughed, a little vexedly, roused from her meditations--"just
one of my poor relations."
"Ah?" said he, a trifle surprised.
A far cry, indeed, from the celebrated dowager, friend of diplomats and
presidents, to Miss Cooney of Saltman's bookstore, in a three-year-old
skirt. And how like Hen, instead of quietly looking the other way, to
yell out some Cooneyesque greeting and wave that perfectly absurd
umbrella....
To Hen it was, a day or two later, that Carlisle mailed the two
Settlement checks, hers for a hundred and Hugo's for ten times that
amount. She licked the stamp with intense satisfaction. However, the
rewards of her generosity seemed somewhat flat. Hen, indeed, called her
up immediately upon receipt of her communication, and contents noted,
with excited thanksgiving. However, that was all: the checks were turned
over to Mr. Dayne, and there the matted ended. Carlisle was oppressed
with a sense of anti-climax. She even thought of sending another and
larger check straight to Dr. Vivian.
Canning, it developed rather to Carlisle's surprise, took his business
quite seriously. His indolences of the sick-leave period were now
sloughed from him. He had returned this time, not merely with his
favorite car and mechanic for the afternoon excursions, but accompanied
by mysterious "papers" and a man stenographer; and, occupying rooms in
the New Arlington Hotel, gave his mornings and even some of his evenings
religiously to work.
"Why, Hugo, are you a _lawyer?_" cried Carlisle, when he first explained
these matters to her.
"I am, and a pretty keen one," said he.
"And do you know how to reorganize _banks?_"
"I can reorganize 'em like the devil," said Hugo sincerely; for if a man
does not want a woman to boast a little before now and then, he does not
want her at all....
His papers and his telegrams, his periods of engrossment in business and
telephone-calls from his secretary, seemed to invest him with a certain
new dignity. A subtle change in his manner was now perceptible. It was
as if he had moulted some of the gay plumage of the wooing-season, and
unconsciously begun to gather something of the authority of the coming
head of a great house. Like many men who have long enjoyed but eluded
the wiles of lovely woman, Canning clearly contemplated the married
estate with profound gravity. In his absence he had communicated his
good news to both his parents, though one was in Boston and the other,
his father, in Washington: testifying, in short, before a Congressional
Investigation Committee. He was not especially detailed as to what they
had said, beyond their general expressions of pleasure; but it was clear
that he regarded it as of the first importance that they should
be pleased.
Matters now, indeed, began to assume a distinctly serious and
responsible complexion. The days of purely idyllic romance seemed to
slip behind; the engagement more and more took shape as the gateway to
an alliance of institutional consequence, entailing far-reaching
reactions in various directions. Mamma's remarks made it plain that,
with Cally's establishment as Mrs. Hugo Canning, her own career of
brilliant aspiration had reached its final goal. Even papa's future
seemed to be affected to its roots. Already he spoke with satisfaction
of taking a smaller house next year; ultimately of "retiring" to an
undefined "little place in the country," toward which in recent years
his talk had slanted somewhat wistfully....
Mrs. Heth and Carlisle were to go to New York on the 20th of May, do a
few days' preliminary shopping there, and sail on the 26th. Canning's
visit lasted till near the middle of the month, running over his
allotted two weeks. And deepening intimacy only brought into stronger
relief his great advantages of position, antecedents, and experience;
only showed Carlisle the more clearly how distinguished, cultivated, and
superior a man she had won. With her pride, there came now, it seemed, a
certain new humility. She was aware that never in the days of the
thundering feet had she been so desirous of pleasing Hugo as now: when
he was no shining symbol or distant parti, but the exceedingly personal
and living man who was so soon to call her to the purple. She caught
herself at times, with some amused surprise, in the deliberate
processes--editing her vocabulary, manner, and wardrobe, for example, in
the light of the preferences she intuitionally read in his eye. So, as
the husbandly dignity descended upon him, she found herself possessed by
something of the wifely duty....
Whenever was this ticklish business of the dovetailing of two lives
accomplished without some small mutual effort? No more could be said
than that Carlisle felt, in rare and weak moments, a certain sense of
strain. An immaterial subtlety this, properly out of the range of
mamma's concrete observations. But papa's heart was tender: did he
possibly suspect that his darling might feel herself just a little
overshadowed at times?
He called Cally into the study one evening before dinner, and with a
mysterious air handed over to her a bulky packet of very
legal-looking papers.
"Why, papa! What is it?"
"Stock!" answered papa, with a chuckle. "Mostly Fourth National. There's
a little more than fifty thousand dollars there in your hand, Cally."
"But--why, papa!... You don't mean it for _me!_"
"A little weddin' present from your old father. I meant to give it to
you next fall, and then I thought, why wait? Had it all put in your
name to-day."
"Oh--_papa!_..."
She threw her arms around his neck, suddenly and oddly touched; not so
much by the gift, for she would have plenty of money soon, as by this
evidence of her father's affectionate thought.
"Your daughter's your daughter till she becomes a wife...." remarked Mr.
Heth. "It won't be that way, will it, Cally, eh?"
"Never in the world.... Oh, papa, how sweet--how _good_--you are to
me!..."
"You've got a fine man," said papa, presently, patting her cheek. "But
my judgment is it's always just as well for a girl to have a little
money of her own. Feels independent. You'll have more when I'm gone, of
course. That'll give you a little better'n three thousand a year.
Non-taxable, too."
She reported her new wealth to Hugo, quite proudly, within two hours.
For he had proved willing this evening to purloin night hours from his
grave duties as attorney-at-law, and by telephone had easily cajoled
Carlisle into breaking an engagement she had made for other society. In
the nicest sort of way, Canning agreed that her father had made her a
handsome dowry. He added, holding her hand tight, that she was to let
him do something for her, too, on their wedding day. Of course she must
have her own money; all she could spend.
"I can spend lots, my dear. You'll find me a frightfully expensive young
person.... There are cigarettes in the drawer, Hugo. I bought the kind
you like, this time...."
She got one for him, struck the match herself. He watched her, loafing
lordly; very handsome and dear he looked in his beautiful
evening clothes.
And thence, in the lamplit privacy of the little study,--Mr. Heth having
fared forth to a Convention "banquet,"--the talk ranged wide. Late in
the evening, it returned again to Carlisle, as the possessor of large
independent funds, a topic of pleasurable possibilities from her
standpoint.
She said idly: "Do you believe it makes you happy to give away money,
Hugo? That's a rule I heard somewhere."
"Unquestionably one of the most refined ways known of tickling one's
little vanity.... How full of good deeds you are these days. You're
thinking of the poor again, I'm right?"
"I must have been. There's nobody else who'd take money from you, is
there?"
"Oh, isn't there? I must introduce you to high finance some day."
"Well," said Carlisle, "I meant just to give it away--to anybody--just
to show how free and superior you are, or something.... Silly, isn't it?
What's your happiness rule, Hugo?"
He replied with the readiness of a man who has been over this path long
ago:
"To have the capacity to want things very much, and the ability to get
them."
And he squeezed the little hand he held, as if to say that he had both
wanted much and gotten much.
Carlisle was much struck with this rule, which she now saw to have been
her own and mamma's all their lives long. After duly complimenting Hugo
upon it, she said:
"Here's another one, a man told me once: 'Cultivate your sympathies all
the time, and do something useful.'"
"That's orthodox! It was a young curate with a lisp who told you, I'll
wager."
"Very warm!" she laughed, struck again by his astuteness. "It was your
hoodoo--Dr. Vivian! And, oh, now that I think of it, he gave me that
other pointer, too,--about giving away money."
Hugo replied: "The man seems to be dripping with wise old saws, in a
thoroughly inexpensive sort of way.... Well, we'll show him something
about giving away money some day."
He was silent a moment, and Carlisle then remembered her thought of
another large subscription to the Settlement, which she, for her part,
could easily make now with fifty thousand dollars all her own. But
Canning obliterated all such reflections by turning and taking her
abruptly in his arms.
"_This_ is what I want to make me happy. Darling--darling!..."
They sat on the shabby old leather lounge which papa had held fast to,
by winter and by summer, for thirty years. Here they had sat down soon
after eight o'clock, and now the soft-toned chimes in the hall had just
sounded eleven-thirty. In the first days of their engagement, Carlisle
had observed that Hugo was "very demonstrative." And now, at the end of
their loverly evening together, he became suddenly and strangely moved,
professing, in a voice unlike his own, his inability to live longer
without her. Then, ignoring all their elaborate plannings, he abruptly
begged her to marry him in June, as he had first asked her....
"Why, Hugo!" she said, surprised and a little uncomfortable. "That's so
much dear foolishness--and not a stitch of clothes made yet! October's
just around the corner.... Do sit up, Hugo dear. There's papa, I think."
Hugo sat up. Reason reasserted its sway. But later, Carlisle remembered
this moment with a dim sense of trouble, not entirely new.... She
wondered with a certain disquiet whether all this was some everlasting
difference between men and women, or whether she, Carlisle, was by
nature a cold and undemonstrative sort of person? Indeed, there did seem
to be a falling short in her somehow; for if not with herself and the
expressions of her love, with what was she to return Hugo's
royal gifts?...
There were three more days; and then young lovers must say farewell. In
little more than a week they would meet again in New York; but still
this seemed a real parting to both. It was the 13th of May, the day
which marked the end of three weeks of cloudless skies. The rain long
predicted by the weather sharps had come in the night, and the dreary
downpour continued throughout the day. Each of the young pair seemed
somehow conscious that the first chapter in their joint story had
reached an end. Better days they might certainly have, but never again
days just like these....
"Keep well, dear heart," begged Canning at the last, "and take care of
all your loveliness for my sake."
Proud of her beauty he ever was, and especially now when she was so soon
to meet his mother in New York. And at the final parting, he said,
visibly moved:
"Understand me, Carlisle, you are mine through all eternity. Whatever
happens to you or me, this is a love that shall not die."
Saying which, having now lingered to the last possible moment, he dashed
from her to his waiting taxicab--his own car having already gone by
express--with just five minutes to catch his train.
From the drawing-room window, Carlisle waved her hand to him; kissed it,
too, since nobody was looking. And then the car leapt forward and shot
away out of sight down the glistening street. Hugo was gone, and
Carlisle was alone.
She stood at the window, looking out blankly into the leaden wetness. It
was just after five, and the rain poured. A curious depression settled
quickly upon her, which was hardly fully accounted for as "missing Hugo
already."... Why? Who upon earth had less cause for depression than she?
No girl lived with more all-embracing reasons for being superlatively
happy. What, then, was the lack in her?--or was this some lack in the
terms of life itself? Was it the mysterious law of the world that
nobody, no matter what she had or did, should ever long keep the jewel
happiness unspotted by a doubt?