hymeneal. No one grows reasonable with the spring. The old lady felt the occult influences against her, and resented them,—the birds aggressively lusty, the sky bringing the roses out until the bushes threatened premature exhaustion from wanton prodigality in blooming, the moon acting like a venal Voudou charm. In a community where none but dowerless brides are born, love easily discounts money; and money was her only capital. She was left more and more in a helpless minority, fighting hard to maintain the solidarity of her resolution and fortune; daily reaffirming the one and intrenching the other by testament and codicil behind a bulwark of papers proof against the assaults of present generations, and unborn ones to the third and fourth degree.
The contract of marriage, her consolation now, was to be her substitute when she was gone, an unanswerable rebuke, a certificate of consent but not approval, a notarial monument to the wealth and generosity of the step-mother, the foolishness of the groom, and to all perpetuity a confession of poverty by the bride. It is hard to be rich, and a mother at the same time;
