With all its graceful, polished pleasantries at the expense of the unmarried sister of thirty and upwards, the social world that professes to regard her matrimonial prospects as past praying for, and herself as oddly unattractive, is quick to take alarm when, apparently accepting their unflattering view, she likewise accepts duties denied, as a rule, to those who are attractive. The very girls who giggled behind "Aunt Priscilla's" back and pitied her undesired lot were promptly and properly aggrieved that she should prove to be so forward, so unmaidenly. Because the right man does not happen to come into a woman's life until so late, or because the wrong one happened in and won her fresh young heart all too early, it results that many a better, wiser, lovelier woman lives unmated to-day than many a woman married in her teens. Lucky is the man the Indian summer of whose life is blessed by the companionship of such. Minneconjou laughed at Priscilla so long as she read to the man in hospital or the bed-ridden dames in the married quarters; but it shied violently at her spending an hour or more each day in reading to Dwight, even though the attendant was never away, and Mrs. Ray, with her needlework, was often present. Was Minneconjou already consigning the present incumbent to outer darkness and thinking of prescribing another mate for Oswald Dwight? Not only did Priscilla note the incessant flittings about the house, but presently she saw that Dwight's attention was wandering. From the adjoining room the muffled sound of voices, in petulant appeal or expostulation, was at times distinctly audible. Félicie wished Madame to do something, apparently, which Madame was determined not to do. Félicie came once or twice with Madame's devoted love to ask if there was anything Monsieur desired or lacked, and to flash guarded malevolence at Priscilla. Félicie came again to say Madame was recalcitrant. She feared Monsieur had not rested well _cette nuit_, and she wished well to postpone her promenade, but the doctor he had prescribed and Monsieur he had desired that Madame neglect no opportunity to take the air, and would not Monsieur again conjure Madame? Madame was deaf to these the protestations of her most devoted. Dwight rose slowly from his reclining chair and, excusing himself to the patient reader, was gone but a moment or two, and Madame was ravishingly gowned and most becomingly hatted and veiled when, just for a moment, as the day's session was closing and the fair reader about departing, Madame rustled in to archly upbraid Monsieur for his cruelty in ordering her to take her drive when it was impossible for him to be at her side. "Ah, but next week--next week!"--this, doubtless, for the benefit of Priscilla--"we shall see!"