Indirect notice to this effect could not well
have been more emphatic, but the sting of it was left for a later
moment. Something else preoccupied Alice: she had just been
surprised by an odd experience. At first sight of this Mr.
Arthur Russell, she had said to herself instantly, in words as
definite as if she spoke them aloud, though they seemed more like
words spoken to her by some unknown person within her: "There!
That's exactly the kind of looking man I'd like to marry!"
In the eyes of the restless and the longing, Providence often
appears to be worse than inscrutable: an unreliable Omnipotence
given to haphazard whimsies in dealing with its own creatures,
choosing at random some among them to be rent with tragic
deprivations and others to be petted with blessing upon blessing.
In Alice's eyes, Mildred had been blessed enough; something ought
to be left over, by this time, for another girl. The final touch
to the heaping perfection of Christmas-in-everything for Mildred
was that this Mr. Arthur Russell, good-looking, kind-looking,
graceful, the perfect fiance, should be also "VERY well off." Of
course! These rich always married one another. And while the
Mildreds danced with their Arthur Russells the best an outsider
could do for herself was to sit with Frank Dowling--the one last
course left her that was better than dancing with him.
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