"A little conceited, goosey girl—that's what you are, Mollie Dane, whom ever this terrible event can not make serious and sensible."
"Terrible event! Now, Miriam, I'm not so sure about that. If I liked the hero of the adventure—and I have liked some of my rejected flirtees, poor fellows!—I should admire his pluck, and fall straightway in love with him for his romantic daring. It is so like what those old fellows—knights and barons and things—used to do, you know. And if I didn't like him—if it were Sardonyx or Oleander—sure, there would be the fun and fame of having my name in all the papers in the country as the heroine of the most romantic adventure of modern times. There would be sensation novels and high-pressure melodramas manufactured out of it, and I would figure in the Divorce Court, and wake up some day, like Lord Byron, and find myself famous."
Miriam listened to this rattle with a face of infinite contempt.
"Silly child! It will ruin your prospects for life. Sir Roger will never marry you now."
"No," said Mollie, composedly, "I don't think he will; for the simple reason that I wouldn't have him."
"Wouldn't have him? What do you mean?"
"What I say, auntie. I wouldn't marry him, or anybody else, just now. I mean to find out who is my husband first."
"Do they know this extraordinary story?"
Mollie laughed.
"No, poor things! And he and guardy are dying by inches of curiosity. Guardy has concocted a story, and tells it with his blandest air to everybody; and everybody smiles, and bows, and listens, and nobody believes a word of it. And that odious Mrs. Carl—there's no keeping her in the dark. She has the cunning of a serpent, that woman. She has an inkling of the truth, already."