And then Minnie herself, although, as has been said, loyally anxious to fulfil her promise to David Powell, began to think that he had overrated the importance of interfering with Rhoda's love-story if love-story it were. Powell lived in a state of exalted and, perhaps, overstrained feeling, and attributed his own earnestness to slighter natures. Of course, on the side of worldly wisdom there was much to be said against Rhoda's fancying herself engaged to Algernon Errington. There was much to be said; and yet Minnie did not feel quite sure that the idea was so preposterous as Powell had appeared to think it. True, Mrs. Errington was vain, and worldly, and ambitious for her son. True, Algernon was volatile, selfish, and little more than twenty years of age. But still there was one solid fact to be taken into account, which, Minnie thought, might be made to outweigh all the obstacles to a marriage between the two young people--the solid fact, namely, of old Maxfield's money. "If Algernon married a wife with a good dower, and if the wife were as pretty, as graceful, and as well-mannered as Rhoda, I do not suppose that anybody would concern himself particularly with her pedigree," thought Minnie. "And even if any one did, that difficulty would not be insuperable, for I have no knowledge of Mrs. Errington, if within three months of the wedding she had not invented a genealogy, only second to her own, for her son's wife, and persuaded herself of its genuineness into the bargain!" As to those other convictions which would have made such a marriage horrible to David Powell, even had it been made with the hearty approval of all the godless world, Minnie did not share them. She did not believe that Rhoda's character had any spiritual depth; and she thought it likely enough that she would be able to make Algernon happy, and to be happy as his wife. "Algy is not base, or cruel, or vicious," she said to herself. "He has merely the faults of a spoiled child. A woman with more earnestness than Rhoda has would weary him; and a wiser woman might, in the long run, be wearied by him. She is pretty, and sufficiently intelligent to make a good audience, and so humble-minded that she would never be exacting, but would gratefully accept any scraps of kindness and affection which Algy might feel inclined to bestow on her. And that would react upon him, and make him bestow bigger scraps for the pleasure of being adored for his generosity." And there were times when she felt very angry with Rhoda;--Rhoda, who turned away from the better to choose the worse, and who was coldly insensible to the fact that Matthew Diamond was in love with her. Nay, had she been cognisant of the fact, she would, Minnie felt sure, have shrank away from the grave, clever gentleman who, as it was, could win nothing warmer from her than a sort of submissive endurance of his presence, and a humble acknowledgment that he was very kind to take notice of an ignorant little thing like her.