'"To save the soul," says one of the old Spanish saints, "it is necessary to have as little intercourse with people as possible."'
'Please don't say that in order to be happy in marriage the same axiom applies; for you are quite capable of proving it,' said the young man laughingly.
'Did you ever notice a funny old book in tarnished gold that was given to Grandmother Loudon on her wedding-day, called "Letters to a Granddaughter"?'
'Yes; I never read it, but I always understood it was published for private circulation only by an ancestress of our own.'
'Oh, very likely. It is full of the acute platitudes I find crowding to my pen when I try to write, so I suppose it is an hereditary strain. Well, the thinglet is divided into "School Life," "Coming Out," "Betrothal," "Marriage," "Maternity." Each section except marriage has about a hundred pages devoted to it. But under marriage there are only five or six pages, beginning: "It must be evident to my dear intelligent young female friends that this is a subject on which every woman who enters the holy estate must be left to make her own special reflections. They cannot be anticipated."'
'Really, Stella,' said her brother, laughing, 'you never seem to look into an old, unknown book without finding a joke in it.'
'Do you call that a joke? You wouldn't if you had turned the grandmother's letters over as I did, when I was seriously trying to make up my mind about entering the holy estate. But the old woman was right to a certain extent; for there you have to do with all the uncertainty of untried depths in two natures, brought into a previously unknown relationship. Who can tell how the venture is to turn out?'
'Therefore, I say, let there be the sympathy of two responsive natures or the differences that arise from two minds consciously alive.'
'Yes; and after building on all these hopeful auguries, you find the result a failure more elaborate than the ordinary type.'
'I cannot quite make out why you are so radically sceptical on the subject of marriage. I am sure a great many of those we know most intimately have made harmonious unions. Ah! I can see by your face you are thinking of poor dear Esther. Certainly, that marriage turned out a failure, though at first it promised to be an exceptionally happy one. But, at any rate, the more mistrustful you are the more careful you should be not to run risks. Even when people start with a good stock of affection, what terrible ruin often overtakes them! There was your poor friend Cicely----'