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Cousin Sarah came home from Germantown quite excited by this romance and discussed it with me daily, in exasperating unconsciousness that I could feel the least distaste for the subject.

“It seems almost providential, Philippa,” she said, over her knitting.

“Providential for which of them?” I asked, stabbing my sheet of music paper with the pen, while I tried in vain to think how many eighth notes would fill a measure.

“For both; though I was really thinking of Mr. Morton. His business is one that peculiarly requires capital; then again he has many interests in Philadelphia, and there is that beautiful place in Germantown with house, stable, horses, and gardens all ready for him.”

“And the girl, too; don’t forget her,” I responded. “Though some men don’t care for these ready-to-wear wives; they prefer to look about and to choose.”

“He would have to look a long distance before he found any one to compare with Miss Darling, either in beauty or suitableness,” said Cousin Sarah, thereby injecting the first drop of poison in my blood and starting me on the downward path toward nervous prostration.

“Miss Darling is a man’s woman,” she continued, unconsciously giving me another push; “the type with which neither you nor I have anything in common, but which we know to be irresistible.”

Now Cousin Sarah is fifty-five, thin, angular, erect, uncompromising. I love and respect her, but do not care to be lumped with her in affairs of the heart, at least not for thirty years to come; and although I think it is disgusting to be labeled a “man’s woman” it is insufferable to be told that one is not!

“I can see Amy Darling in my mind’s eye,” I ventured; “blonde, dimply, fluffy as to head, willowy as to figure so as to cling the better, blue eyes swimming in unshed tears, and a manner so exquisitely feminine that she makes all the other women in her vicinity appear independent and mannish. But not all men care for pets, Cousin Sarah–some of them prefer companions.”

“A pet is a companion,” remarked Cousin Sarah casually as she left the room, giving me thereby an entirely new and most unpleasant thought.

I have known Richard Morton for many months, and although I have met him very often at other places, he has been a constant visitor at our house. If he has had any resemblance to a possible suitor why hasn’t Cousin Sarah discovered it? Is she deaf and blind, or have my ears and eyes played me false? Am I so undesirable that it would never cross her mind that a man might fall in love with me? Hardly, for she is well aware that several men have expressed their willingness to annex my poverty-stricken charms.

As I look back upon the weeks that followed the interview with Cousin Sarah I see that Richard was never the same after he received Mr. Darling’s letter. I felt a nameless difference. It was not only that I saw him less frequently, but that he gave me less of himself when I did see him. I, too, was on guard and never succeeded in being quite natural. I am not so foolish as to give up to another girl a man who loves me, simply because she is rich. The thought that worries me night and day is this: if at the moment he only feels for me friendship, ought I to let it grow into love when there is another woman who could give him with herself everything he needs to assure his career? With Philippa Armstrong for a wife he will have to work unceasingly, and unless fortune is particularly kind he may not achieve a large success for many years. If he marries Amy Darling (soft, silly, spineless little name!) he has house, lands, and money, all the influence of her father’s former business associates, and has, besides, carried out his own father’s wishes.