"Yes; I don't blame you for refusing, either; some girls don't seem to have the necessary strength of mind. No; I'm not blaming anybody for anything. Nelly, next week it will be a year since our first betrothal; do you remember? Haven't you, after all, loved me a little, all the time?" He looked at me wistfully. "At least," I said, "I didn't love Lord Strathay." I didn't think it necessary to correct him as to my refusal of the Earl. "We'll see if Kitty won't take you in again until we can be married," he said, jabbing the paper again and changing the subject almost brusquely. "If you don't want to go back to your aunt, that'll be better than a boarding house, won't it? You pay the girls out of this, and I'll look after the other bills. There's a good fellow. Now, then what's No. 18?" I fingered with an odd reluctance the little roll of bills he handed me, though it was like a life buoy to a drowning sailor. "You'd better," he said, with quiet decision, cutting short my hesitation. "The girls won't need to know where it comes from, or that I know anything about it. It's ever so much nicer that way, don't you think?" I put the money with my pride into my pocket, and continued sorting out bills from the rubbish. In all we scheduled over forty before we gave it up. Besides the Van Nostrand painting and one or two accounts that probably escaped us, I found that I owed between $4,000 and $5,000. "That is the whole of my dowry, John," I said. "I would as willingly accept you as a portionless bride," he declaimed in theatrical fashion; and then we both broke into hysterical laughter. "Never mind," he said, at last, wiping his eyes. "I never dreamed that all this rubbish about you could cost so much; I ought to have had my eyes open. But now we aren't going to worry one little worry, are we? I'll straighten it all out in time. And now I really must go." And so he went away with a parting kiss, leaving me very happy. I don't know that I love him; or rather I know that I don't--but I shall be good to him and make him so happy that he'll forget all the trouble I have cost him. Dear old unselfish, patient John! And I am more content and less torn by anxiety than I have been for many a long day. It is such a relief! And so I'm thinking it over. Even from the selfish standpoint I have not done so badly. John is developing wonderfully. He is not so destitute of social finesse as when he came, his language is better, his bearing more confident. He makes a good figure in evening dress. He will be a famous success in the law, and, with a beautiful wife to help him, he should go far. He may be President some day, or Minister to the Court of St. James, or a Justice of the Supreme Court. Whatever his career, I shall help him. I have the power to do things in the world as well as he. And once married, I may almost choose my friends and his associates. The women will no longer fear me so much. He shall not regret this night's work.