It was the day after Daniel's "proposal" that, as Margaret stood before her bureau in her bedroom dressing to receive her lover, Harriet, who had been quite unable to disguise her satisfaction over the betrothal, knocked at her door and came into her room.

"Can't I help you dress, dear?" she asked kindly.

"Will you hook this thing up the back, please, Hattie?"

"Oh, but you are rash to wear this new chiffon waist, Margaret; chiffon mashes so easily, you know."

"But I'm not going out; I shall not be putting a wrap over it," said Margaret, looking at Harriet in surprise.

"I know you're not going out, but, Margaret, chiffon mashes so easily!"

"Well, I'll try to remember not to hold any of the children, though I'd rather mash the waist than forego that pleasure. Still, clothes are scarce and I've got no money for a trousseau——"

"Donkey! This will be your first tête-à-tête with Mr. Leitzel since your engagement, and he's quite crazy about you—and chiffon is most perishable."

Margaret looked at her blankly.

"Do you see no connection between the two facts, you goose?" demanded Harriet.

"Oh!" exclaimed Margaret. "Now I see what you mean!"

"Really?"

"But, Hattie, dear, you needn't be so—so explicit."

"'Explicit!' I nearly had to draw a diagram! Look here, Margaret, you're too thin; there's no excuse for anybody's looking as thin as you do when cotton wadding is so cheap."

"Recommend it to Mr. Leitzel; he's thinner than I am."

"I came in to tell you that Walter has ordered the wedding announcements and they will be finished in ten days; you and I and Mr. Leitzel can meantime be addressing the envelopes. I've drawn up a list of names; you can look over it and see whether I've forgotten any one. You must get Mr. Leitzel's list to-day."

"Very well."

Margaret turned away to her closet to hide the quick tears that sprang to her eyes at her sister's quite cold-blooded eagerness to speed her on her way. Harriet seemed to be almost feverishly fearful that something might intervene to stop the marriage if it were not quickly precipitated.

It was when her betrothed gave her, that evening, a diamond ring, that Margaret's strongest revulsion came to her, so strong that when she had conquered it, by reminding herself again of all the arguments by which she had brought herself to this pass, she had overcome for good and all any last remaining hesitation to accept her doom.

"You may think I was very extravagant, Margaret," Daniel said, as he held her hand and slipped the beautiful jewel upon her finger. "It cost me three hundred dollars. But you see, dear, a diamond is always property; capital safely invested. I'm only too glad and thankful that I can afford to give my affianced bride a costly diamond engagement ring. Is it tight enough?" he anxiously inquired. "I'm afraid it is a little loose; you better have it made tighter; no extra charge for that, they told me at the jeweller's. You might lose it if it's loose."

Margaret had a momentary impulse to tear the ring from her finger and fling it in his face, and such impulses were so foreign to her gentle disposition that she marvelled at herself.

"I'm glad it's property, Daniel," she returned with a perfunctory facetiousness, "for if you don't use me well, I can sell out to Isaac or Israel and run off! Or, if business got dull with you, we could fall back on our diamond ring!"

"My business get dull!" he laughed. It was rather delightful to know she was marrying him with so little idea of his great possessions; another proof of the fascination he had always had for ladies, according to Jennie and Sadie.

He was beginning to feel a little nervous at the thought of his sisters. Jennie, especially, would not like it that he was going ahead and getting married without consulting her. Of course, she and Sadie would both see, as soon as they came to know Margaret, that he had, even without their help, "struck a bonanza" in getting such a wife; so sweet-tempered and unselfish, so lovely looking, so healthy, such "a perfect lady," so "refined," except when she said "damn" and "devilish." He must warn her not to forget herself before his sisters—they'd never get over the shock. He had no doubt that eventually Jennie and Sadie would be as delighted with his "choice" as he was himself. He had told them so in his letter to them that day, assuring them that they would find his bride possessed of every quality they had always insisted upon in the girl he made his wife.

It did seem strange not to be able to tell them what Margaret's fortune was. He knew how eager they must be to know. He was beginning to feel very restive himself at not being enlightened on that score.

"Funny how I can't bring myself to ask her about it!" he wondered at himself for the hundredth time. "But she seems so disinterested in her love for me, how can I seem less so in mine for her? It would not look well!"

"Harriet wants you to draw up your list," Margaret here reminded him, "for the wedding announcements; she'd like to have it to-day."

"Harriet wants—— Is she running this wedding?" he asked suspiciously.

"Yes, quite so. You and she and I have got to address envelopes all day to-morrow, you know."

"Very well. I have already made out my list. It took a good deal of careful and thoughtful discrimination," he said, drawing a document from his pocket and unfolding it, "though not nearly so much as it would if I were being married in New Munich and having a large wedding. Mere announcements—one doesn't have to draw the line so carefully, you know, as in the case of invitations to one's house."

"'Draw the line?'" repeated Margaret questioningly; for social caste in South Carolina, being less fluid than in Pennsylvania, her family for generations had scarcely even rubbed against people of any other status than its own; and the gradations and shades of social difference with which Daniel had wrestled in making his list was something quite outside her experiences.

"Well, you see, every one we send announcements to," Daniel elucidated his meaning, "is bound to call on you; only too glad of the chance. And, naturally, you don't want undesirable people calling on you. If you didn't return their calls, you would make enemies of them; and while I am so fortunately situated that that would not make any material difference to us, still it is better to avoid making enemies if possible."

"But—I don't understand. How do you happen to have acquaintances that are 'undesirable,' and in what sense undesirable—so much so as to make it awkward to have to return their calls?"

"Well, for instance, the clerks employed in my office. I think they may perhaps club together and give us a handsome wedding-present if we send them cards. And if they do, I suppose their wives will feel privileged to call."

"And their wives are 'undesirable?' Yes, I suppose I see what you mean. How awfully narrow our lives are, aren't they? I imagine it might be a very broadening and interesting experience to really make friends with other classes than our own. I've never had the shadow of a chance to."

Daniel's glow of pride in realizing that he was marrying a woman whose aristocratic ignorance of other classes than her own was so absolute as to make her suppose na?vely that it might be "broadening and interesting" to know such, quite counteracted the disturbing effect of this absurd suggestion. He had only to remember his sisters' long struggle for recognition and their present precarious foothold in New Munich "society" to appreciate to the full the (to him) wonderful fact that his wife and all her "kin," as they called their relatives, "could have it to say" they had always been "at the top."

That such a wife might find his sisters "undesirable" did not occur to him, his sense of his sisters' crudities being dulled by familiarity with them, and his standard of value being so largely a financial one.

"When folks call on you in New Munich, Margaret," said Daniel, "Jennie and Sadie will be a great help to you............