"It is not at all safe to suppose that I am in any respect like Helen," she replied. "We are very good friends, but exceedingly different in character."
"That follows, does it not? Different characters must have different tastes."
"It certainly seems a natural inference. And so I am to presume that you were _not_ attached to the convent?"
"That is going rather too far. I liked it better than any other school at which I ever was placed. But I am not fond of restraint and subjection; therefore I am glad that my school-days are over."
Mr. Rathborne smiled slightly. Even in the dusk he could see enough of the presence before him to judge that restraint and subjection would indeed be little likely to please this imperial-looking creature.
"I am to congratulate you, then," he said, "on the fact that your school-days are definitely over?"
"Yes, they are definitely over, and it remains now to be seen what schooling life holds for me."
"Certainly a singular girl this!" thought the man, who was well aware that most young ladies had little thought of what schooling life might hold for them. "If I may be permitted to prophesy," he said aloud, "I think that life has in store for you only pleasant experiences."
"That is very kind of you," answered Marion, with a mocking tone in her voice, which was very familiar to her associates; "but I don't know that I have any claim to special exemption from the usual lot of mankind; and certainly pleasant experiences are not the usual lot, unless everyone is very much mistaken."
"People are too much given to sitting down and moaning over the unpleasantness of life, when they might make it otherwise by taking matters into their own hands," said Mr. Rathborne. "But that requires a strong will."
"And something beside will, does it not?"
"Oh! of course the ability to seize opportunity, and make one's self master of it."
"That is what I should like," said Marion, speaking as if to herself: "to seize opportunity. But the opportunity must come in order to be seized."
"There is little doubt but that it will come to you," remarked her companion, more and more impressed.
How far the conversation might have progressed in this personal vein, into which it had so unexpectedly fallen, it is difficult to say; for a spark of congenial sympathy had been already struck between these two people, who a few minutes before had been absolute strangers to each other. But at this point Mrs. Dalton stepped out of the hall and came toward them.