"Well, girls," she said, looking first at Harriet, then at Susan, "I have some good news for you. Our little Annie here is too modest, so I have to tell you for her." Harriet Eustace laughed unsuspiciously. "Don't tell us that Annie has been writing a great anonymous novel like Margaret Edes," she said, and Susan laughed also. "Whatever news it may be, it is not that," she said. "Nobody could suspect Annie of writing a book. I myself was not so much surprised at Margaret Edes." To Annie's consternation, her grandmother turned upon her a long, slow, reading look. She flushed under it and swallowed a spoonful of cereal hastily. Then her grandmother chuckled under her breath and her china blue eyes twinkled. "Annie has done something a deal better than to write a book," said she, looking away from the girl, and fixing unsparing eyes upon her daughters. "She has found a nice man to marry her." Harriet and Susan dropped their spoons and stared at their mother. "Mother, what are you talking about?" said Harriet sharply. "She has had no attention." "Sometimes," drawled the old lady in a way she affected when she wished to be exasperating, "sometimes, a little attention is so strong that it counts and sometimes attention is attention when nobody thinks it is." "Who is it?" asked Harriet in rather a hard voice. Susan regarded Annie with a bewildered, yet kindly smile. Poor Susan had never regarded the honey pots of life as intended for herself, and thus could feel a kindly interest in their acquisition by others. "My granddaughter is engaged to be married to Mr. von Rosen," said the old lady. Then she stirred her coffee assiduously. Susan rose and kissed Annie. "I hope you will be happy, very happy," she said in an awed voice. Harriet rose, to follow her sister's example but she looked viciously at her mother. "He is a good ten years older than Annie," she said. "And a good twenty-five younger than you," said the old lady, and sipped her coffee delicately. "He is just the right age for Annie." Harriet kissed Annie, but her lips were cold and Annie wondered. It never occurred to her then, nor later, to imagine that her Aunt Harriet might have had her own dreams which had never entirely ended in rainbow mists. She did not know how hardly dreams die. They are sometimes not entirely stamped out during a long lifetime. That evening Von Rosen came to call on Annie and she received him alone in the best parlour. She felt embarrassed and shy, but very happy. Her lover brought her an engagement ring, a great pearl, which had been his mother's and put it on her finger, and Annie eyed her finger with a big round gaze like a bird's. Von Rosen laughed at the girl holding up her hand and staring at the beringed finger. "Don't you like it, dear?" he said. "It is the most beautiful ring I ever saw," said Annie, "but I keep thinking it may not be true."