"Let her go with you, Charlotte," she begged me with tears in her eyes. "I must get her away from this attractive but undesirable young man! That absurd uncle who didn't want his name to die out must have been a lunatic or an imbecile. Why shouldn't such a vulgar name become extinct? And to think that my exquisite Dorothea--whose figure and eyelashes have been remarked by royalty--to think that she should be expected to graft herself on to that family tree of all others! To think that she may take that name herself and, for aught we know, add half a dozen more to the list; all boys, probably, who would marry in course of time and produce others, piling Hoggs on Hoggs, as it were! It is like one of those horrible endless chains that are condemned by the government!" I gave way to peals of laughter at this impassioned speech, evidently annoying Mrs. Valentine, who expected sympathy. I tried to placate her with reference to the poet of the name which had none but delightful associations in Scotland. "Then if they choose to defy me and marry each other, let them go and live in Scotland!" she snapped. "Would you have minded Dolly's marrying Lord Bacon?" I asked. This gave her food for thought. "No," she said reflectively, "for, of course, he was a lord, which is something." "But how about the associations?" "I can't explain, but somehow they are not as repulsive to me," she insisted. "I always think of bacon cooked, not raw, and--the other is alive!" As for my own difficulty, it is, after all, a conventional one. I cannot bear the idea of marrying my employer; a man known by sight and reputation to everybody in Washington, while I am a relatively unknown person without fortune, kith, or kin. The thought brings to mind sensational headlines in cheap newspapers regarding the wedding of some aged millionaire with his youthful stenographer, and the consequent alarms of his household; or the alliance of some scion of a wealthy house with a trained nurse of obscure lineage and vaulting ambition. I am all alone in the world, and though my father, who died when he was only five and twenty, left me but the barest support, I have gloried in my independence and rejoiced in my modest successes. My people on both sides were of good stock. Even the Winthrops could climb my family tree and find no bad fruit on it, but the world will say: "What a splendid match for Charlotte Clifford." ... "I wonder how Ellen Winthrop will take it?" ... "I shouldn't have thought Clive Winthrop would marry his secretary, somehow, though there's nothing against her; but he could look higher!"