"Father, I am going to marry Aline Des Anges." His father, who had been dozing in the sun by the south window, raised his eyes to his son's face with a kindly, blank look, and said, thoughtfully: "Des Anges. That's a good family, Jacob, and a wonderful woman, Madam Des Anges. Is she alive yet?" * * * * * When Madam Des Anges, eighty years old, and strong and well, heard of this, she said: "It is the etiquette of France that one family should make the proposition to the other family. Under the circumstances _I_ will be the family that proposes. I will make a precedent. The Des Anges make precedents." And she rode down to the Dolph house in the family carriage--the last time it ever went out--and made her "proposition" to Jacob Dolph the elder, and he brightened up most wonderfully, until you would have thought him quite his old self, and he told her what an honor he esteemed the alliance, and paid her compliments a hundred words long. And in May of the next year, King's Bridge being out of the question, and etiquette being waived at the universal demand of society, the young couple stood up in the drawing-room of the Dolph house to be wed. The ceremony was fashionably late--seven o'clock in the evening. And after it was over, and the young couple had digested what St. Paul had to say about the ordinance of wedlock, and had inaudibly promised to do and be whatever the domine required of them, they were led by the half-dozen groomsmen to the long glass between the front windows, and made to stand up there, with their faces toward the company, and to receive the congratulations of a mighty procession of friends, who all used the same formulas, except the very old ones, who were delicately indelicate. The bridegroom wore a blue coat and trousers, and a white satin waistcoat embroidered with silver-thread roses and lilies-of-the-valley. The coat was lined with cream-colored satin, quilted in a most elaborate pattern; and his necktie was of satin, too, with embroidered ends. His shirt was a miracle of fine linen. As to the bride, she was in white satin and lace, and at her throat she wore a little bunch of late white columbines, for which Mr. Jacob Dolph the younger had scoured the woods near Fort Washington. There was to be a grand supper, later; and the time of waiting was filled up with fashionable conversation.