“Mr. Harrison has come to New York to live,” was the other's reply. “He has just bought a really magnificent country seat about ten miles from here--the old Everson place, if you remember it; and he is negotiating for a house near ours in the city. My husband and I both agreed, Helen, that if you could make Mr. Harrison fall in love with you it would be all that we could desire.” “That is not the real problem,” Helen said, gazing out of the carriage with a frightened look upon her face; “it is whether I can fall in love with him. Aunt Polly, it is dreadful to me to think of marrying; I don't want to marry! I don't care who the man is!” “We'll see about that later on,” said the other, smiling reassuringly, and at the same time putting her arm about the girl; “there is no hurry, my love, and no one has the least thought of asking you to do what you do not want to do. But a chance like this does not come often to any girl, my dear. Mr. Harrison is in every way a desirable man.” “But he's stupid, Aunt Polly, I know he's stupid! All self-made men are; they tell you about how they made themselves, and what wonderful things they hare made!” “You must of course not expect to find Mr. Harrison as cultured as yourself, Helen,” was the reply; “his education has been that of the world, and not of books. But nobody thinks less of a man for that in the world; the most one can ask is that he does not make pretenses. And he is very far from stupid, I assure you, or he would not have been what he is.” “I suppose not,” said Helen, weakly. “And, besides,” observed Aunt Polly, laughing to cheer the girl up, “I assure you it doesn't make any difference. My husband makes no pretense to being a wit, or a musician, or anything like that; he's just a plain, sensible man, but we get along as happily as you could wish. We each of us go our own way, and understand each other perfectly.” “So I'm to marry a plain, sensible man?” asked the girl, apparently not much comforted by the observation. “A plain, sensible man with ten million dollars, my dear,” said Aunt Polly, “who adores you and has nothing to do with his money but to let you make yourself happy and glorious with it? But don't worry yourself, my child, because the first thing for you to feel is that if you don't like him you need not take him. It all rests upon you; he won't be here till after the rest, till the evening train, so you can have time to think it over and calculate whether ten million dollars will buy anything you want.” And Mrs. Roberts laughed. Then the carriage having passed within the gates of her home, she kissed the girl upon her cheek. “By the way,” she added, “if you want to meet a romantic person to offset Mr. Harrison, I'll tell you about Mr. Howard. I haven't mentioned him, have I?” “I never heard of him,” said Helen. “It's a real romance,” said the other. “You didn't suppose that your sensible old auntie could have a romance, did you?” “Tell me about it,” laughed Helen.