"Edward Damon is an exception. He is intelligent, unaffected, and agreeable. He is not all simper and softness. He can talk with one without being lost in his own self-conceit, fancying you deep in admiration of his own charming self. Yes, I really like Edward Damon."
The shoe was laced, and the girls passed on, but the voice of Della Lisle seemed still to linger upon the ears of Philip. His own door opened upon the hall very near to the waiting girls; he had heard every word. First, the voice of Della was pleasant and gentle; it powerfully attracted him; second, her words were not those of an ordinary city lady.
"A sensible girl, that—Della, Estelle called her; a pretty name. And Edward Damon is there, it seems, the best fellow I ever knew. Who knows? Maybe a shoe-string influences my fate. At all events, I am influenced in a way I may not resist."
And Philip St. Leger, with extraordinary inconsistency, soon appeared among his mother's guests. There was but one drawback to the joy and gratification of that mother and the three sisters—his necktie was not of the very latest style.
CHAPTER VI.
MISSIONARY LIFE.
In falling in love with Della Lisle at first sight, Philip pleased himself only and his sister Estelle; that is, if we leave Della out. His mother had the tall, graceful daughter of a millionaire selected for him; Leonora, the elder sister, had her pet friend Miss De Rosier, secretly engaged and under promise; Juliet, the younger, wished him never to fall in love, never to marry, but to remain forever her dear, only, adorable brother Philip, for whom she would give up all the world and live a maiden to the end of her life.
This engagement with Della, however, was not the worst that might be. They discovered this to their discomfiture when shortly after he announced to them one morning at the breakfast-table that on the following week he should leave for Princeton.