"And how shall I explain conduct that will appear so strange as this to you? You know Ned Graham _almost_ as well as I do; and as we both have known him from childhood, it would be idle in me to speak of his fine, noble, generous character, and of his _sensibleness_, by far a rarer component of the human character than many people seem to imagine. Our engagement was, I confess, an altogether unanticipated thing to me, though there was always a lingering thought in my mind that Ned approached a _little_ nearer my standard of manly perfection than any suitor I ever had. You and I have often together admired the outward man, so I will not now speak of those great black eyes of his, which seem to pierce you through and through, as though they _would_ know your secret thoughts, (which, as far as they regarded him, _could_ be only thoughts of admiration and respect.) And that manly form, so sweet and noble, that was never yet bent by the weight of a mean or sordid thought--that _could not_ stoop to any thing low or ignoble. Now, when I tell you that Ned has hired himself to a sea-captain, whom his father has known from boyhood, for three years, that his wages (excepting only a moiety) have been paid at Ned's request into his father's hands to aid the old man, who is now in difficulties, when I tell you this, you will concur with me in thinking _my_ Edward Graham the most noble and generous youth in the world. "Only a week before his departure _we_ made our arrangements; for before that time Ned had never spoken to me of love--and I never heard of his broaching the subject to any one else, did you? In three years he is coming back again. By that time _we_ shall have become settled, and have learned to love our new home. What farmers we shall be! Then Ned will join us in Wisconsin--and who says we shall not be a happy family there? And that Flory Cleveland will not prove herself quite tractable and human, although people have dared and presumed to call her a 'desperate flirt?'