Still, I stood it. I endured also
without a murmur the courtship and declaration of love of a perfect
booby of a man; that is to say, he was a booby in the eyes of a
woman--men might like him. I presume that as Mr. Harley has chosen
him to stand for the hero of his book, he must admire him; but I
don't, and haven't, and sha'n't. Yet I have pretended to do so; and
finally, when he proposed marriage to me I meekly answered 'yes,'
weeping in the bitterness of my spirit that my promise bound me to do
so; and Stuart Harley, noting those tears, calls them tears of joy!"
"You needn't have accepted him," I said, softly. "That wasn't part
of the bargain."
"Yes, it was," she returned, positively; "that is, I regarded it so,
and I must act according to my views of things. What I promised was
to follow his wishes in all things save in marriage to a man I didn't
love. Getting engaged is not getting married, and as he wished me to
get engaged, so I did, expecting of course that the book would end
there, as it ought to have done, and that therefore no marriage would
ever come of the engagement.
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