“Yes, I suppose so,” sighed Louise. “But then that’s nice. It isn’t like somebody you don’t know and love already. She’ll always be ours, and he’ll be ours, too. Won’t it be nice? Don’t you hope it’s so, Harry?” And Cornelia’s cheeks grew pinker in the kitchen as she remembered words and looks that had passed that evening, and turned to her task with a happy smile on her lips. CHAPTER XXXI It was just one year from the day when she had taken that first journey from West to East and met the pretty college girl on her tearful way home to her soul’s trying that Mrs. Maxwell came back from her sojourn in California. The business that had taken her there had prolonged itself, and then unexpectedly the sick sister had telegraphed that she was coming out to spend the winter, and wanted her to remain; and because the sister had seemed to be in very great need of her she had remained. But now the sister was gaining rapidly, was fully able to be left in the care of a nurse and the many friends with whom she was surrounded, and Mrs. Maxwell had been summoned home for a great event. As the train halted, at the college station, and a bevy of girls came chattering round, bidding some comrade good-bye, she thought of the day one year ago when she had been so interested in one girl, and wondered whether her instincts concerning her had been true. She was going home to attend that girl’s wedding now! That girl so soon to be married to her dear and only son, and since that one brief afternoon together she had never seen that little girl again. Oh, there had been letters, of course, earnest, loving, welcoming letters on the part of the mother, glad letters expressing joy at her son’s choice and picturing the future in glowing colors; shy, sweet, almost apologetic letters on the part of the girl, as if she had presumed in accepting a love so great as that of this son; and the mother had been glad, joyously glad, for was she not the first girl she had ever laid eyes upon whose face looked as if she were sweet, strong, and wise enough for her beloved son’s wife? But now as she neared the place, and the meeting again was close at hand, her heart began to misgive her. What if she had made a mistake? What if this girl was not all those things that she had thought at that first sight? What if Arthur, too, had been deceived, and the girl would turn out to be frivolous, superficial, unlovely in her daily life, unfine in soul and thought? For was she, the mother, not responsible in a large way for this union of the two? Had she not fairly thrown her son into the way of knowing the girl, and furthered their first acquaintance in her letters in little subtle ways that she hardly realized at the time, but that had come from the longing of her soul to have a daughter just like what she fancied this girl must be?