“Oh, how _lovely_ of you!” said Dosia, touched in the sweetest part of her nature, and turning up to him a face of such childlike and fervent gratitude that it was like a little rift of heavenly blue let in upon the scene. George Sutton’s seasoned heart gave an unexpected thump. He was used to feeling susceptible to the presence of a pretty girl; it had been his normal condition ever since he first grew up, when a girl had been a forbidden distraction in an existence devoted to earning and living on eight dollars a week; when he slept in the office, and studied Spanish in a night class. He had given a dozen or more years of his life to amassing a comfortable fortune before he felt himself at liberty to give any time to society; he had always cherished an old-fashioned idea that a man should be able to surround a woman with luxuries before asking her to marry him, and now that he had money, it was no secret that he was looking for a wife to share it. There was hardly a young woman in the place who had not been the recipient of the ardor of his glances, as well as of more substantial tokens of his regard; his sentimental remarks had been confided by one girl to another. But further than this, much as he desired marriage, George had not gone. Susceptibility has this drawback: it is hard to concentrate it permanently on one person. George Sutton’s heart performed the pleasing miracle of always burning, yet never being consumed. Under all his amatory sentiment was the cool streak of common sense that showed so strongly in his business relations, and kept him from committing himself to the permanent selection of a partner who might prove, after all, to have no real fitness for the part. He was fond of saying that he had never made a bad bargain. Dosia’s grateful and sympathetic eyes raised to his opened up a sweet vista of domestic joys. She did not notice his growing silence as she gayly accepted the engines and dolls and sail-boats that he bought for the young Alexanders. She insisted on carrying them herself to be deposited near Lois, and then afterwards went off again with him, to be fed on ices, and have chances taken for her in everything; she did not notice that she was the recipient of his whole attention, although everyone else smilingly observed it. Dosia was only filling up the time until the dancing began.