'I think she will like better to remain just as she is.' 'Just as she is?' 'I mean, not to make a choice,' Cousin Maria went on, smiling. Raymond hesitated a moment. 'Do you mean that you have tried to make her make one?' At this the good lady broke into a laugh. 'My dear Raymond, how little you must think I know my child!' 'Perhaps, if you haven't tried to make her, you have tried to prevent her. Haven't you told her I am unsuccessful, I am poor?' She stopped him, laying her hand with unaffected solicitude on his arm. '_Are_ you poor, my dear? I should be so sorry!' 'Never mind; I can support a wife,' said the young man. 'It wouldn't matter, because I am happy to say that Dora has something of her own,' Cousin Maria went on, with her imperturbable candour. 'Her father thought that was the best way to arrange it. I had quite forgotten my opposition, as you call it; that was so long ago. Why, she was only a little girl. Wasn't that the ground I took? Well, dear, she's older now, and you can say anything to her you like. But I do think she wants to stay----' And she looked up at him, cheerily. 'Wants to stay?' 'With Effie and Tishy.' 'Ah, Cousin Maria,' the young man exclaimed, 'you are modest about yourself!' 'Well, we are all together. Now is that all? I _must_ see if there is enough champagne. Certainly--you can say to her what you like. But twenty years hence she will be just as she is to-day; that's how I see her.' 'Lord, what is it you do to her?' Raymond groaned, as he accompanied his hostess back to the crowded rooms. He knew exactly what she would have replied if she had been a Frenchwoman; she would have said to him, triumphantly, overwhelmingly: 'Que voulez-vous? Elle adore sa mere!' She was, however, only a Californian, unacquainted with the language of epigram, and her answer consisted simply of the words: 'I am sorry you have ideas that make you unhappy. I guess you are the only person here who hasn't enjoyed himself to-night.' Raymond repeated to himself, gloomily, for the rest of the evening, 'Elle adore sa mere--elle adore sa mere!' He remained very late, and when but twenty people were left and he had observed that the Marquise, passing her hand into Mrs. Temperly's arm, led her aside as if for some important confabulation (some new light doubtless on what might be hoped for Effie), he persuaded Dora to let the rest of the guests depart in peace (apparently her mother had told her to look out for them to the very last), and come with him into some quiet corner. They found an empty sofa in the outlasting lamp-light, and there the girl sat down with him. Evidently she knew what he was going to say, or rather she thought she did; for in fact, after a little, after he had told her that he had spoken to her mother and she had told him he might speak to _her_, he said things that she could not very well have expected.