But for all that, Rosalind had a background belief that a time would come when a complete revelation would be possible. Her mind stipulated for a wider experience for Sally before then. It would be so infinitely easier to tell her tale to one who had herself arrived at the goal of motherhood, utterly unlike as (so she took for granted) was to be the way of her arrival, sunlit and soft to tread, from the black precipice and thorny wastes that had brought her to her own. Any possible marriage of Sally's, however, was a vague abstraction of an indistinct future. Perhaps we should say _had been_, and admit that since her own marriage Mrs. Fenwick had begun to be more distinctly aware that her little daughter was now within a negligible period of the age when her own tree of happiness in life had been so curtly broken off short, and no new leafage suffered to sprout upon the broken stem. This identity of age could not but cause comparison of lots. "Suppose it had been Sally!" was the thought that would sometimes spring on her mother's mind; and then the girl would wonder what mamma was thinking of that she should make her arm that was round her tighten as though she feared to lose her, or bring her an irrelevant, unanticipated kiss. This landmark-period bristled with suggested questions of what was to follow it. Sally would marry--that seemed inevitable; and her mother, now that she was herself married again, did not shrink from the idea as she had done, in spite of her protests against her own selfishness. Miss Sally's attitude toward the tender passion did not at present give any grounds for supposing that she was secretly its victim, or ever would be. Intense amusement at the perturbation she occasioned to sensitive young gentlemen seemed to be the nearest approach to reciprocating their sentiments that she held out any hopes of. She admitted as a pure abstraction that it was possible to be in love, but regarded applicants as obstacles that stood in their own way. "I'm sure his adoration does him great credit," she said to Laetitia one day about a new devotee--for there was no lack of them. "But it's his eyes, and his nose, and his mouth, and his chin, and his ears, and his hair, and his hands and his feet, and his altogether that----" "That what?" asked her friend. "That you can't expect a girl to then, if you insist upon it." "Some girl will, you'll see, one of these days." "What!--even that man with teeth!" This was some chance acquaintance, useful for illustration, but not in the story. Laetitia knew enough of him to give a testimonial. "He's a very good fellow, whatever you may say!" said she. "My dear Tishy! Goodness is the distinguishing feature of the opposite sex. I speak as a person of my own. Men's moral qualities are always high. If it wasn't for their appearance, and their manners, and their defective intelligences, they would make the most charming husbands."