“He looks as if he had just been let out of the dark room. Do you beat him? What do you suppose my mother will say?” “Oh, I suppose he’s bored too. You see it’s nearly three months now. I tried to make him read, but after the third day he went to sleep.” Hal drew a low chair to the fire, close to the one Patience occupied. She laughed merrily. “Fancy your trying to make Bev intellectual! That would be a good subject for a one-act farce. Well, I’ve come up here to tell you something, and to talk it over. I, too, am contemplating matrimony.” “Oh, don’t!” cried Patience. “I believe that is usually the advice of married people, but the world goes on marrying itself just the same. But my problem is much more complicated than the average, for there are two men in the question.” “Two? You don’t mean to say you don’t know your own mind?” “That is exactly the fact in the case. You remember Reginald Wynne? Well, Patience, I do like that man. I never liked any man one tenth as much. I might say he’s the only serious man I’ve ever met, the only one, to put it in another way, that I ever could take seriously as a man. He has brains—he’s a lawyer, you know, and they say very fine things of him—and he is so kind, and _strong_. When I am with him I don’t feel frivolous and worldly and one of a dozen. If I have any better nature and any apology for a brain, they are on top then. He is the last sort of man I ever thought I’d fall in love with, but it takes us some years to become acquainted with ourselves, doesn’t it? I do respect him so, and it is such a novel sensation. He even makes me read. Fancy! And I’ve even promised him that I won’t read any more French novels, excepting those he selects, nor smoke cigarettes. So, you see, I am in love. “But, Patience,” she continued with tragic emphasis, “he hasn’t a red—and I know I’d be miserable, poor. When papa saw which way the wind was blowing, he took me into the library and told me that although he made fifty thousand dollars a year, we spent nearly all of it, and that he should not have much to leave besides his life insurance—one hundred thousand—which of course would go to mamma. It is a matter of honour never to sell this place, and the revenue from the farm—which is to go to Beverly—would keep it up in a small way. The town house is to be May’s and mine; but what will that amount to? May and I have always pretty well understood that if we want to keep on having the things that habit has made a necessity to us, we must marry rich men! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” “Well, the other man?”