But it
served her purpose as no classic mould would have done. She did not
overestimate it. But she was probably better satisfied with it than with
most of those conditions of her life that people were always telling her
were ideal. They spoke of her as the only child in a way that implied
congratulations on the undivided inheritance--and that reminded her how she
had always wanted a sister. They talked of her idyllic life on a blue-grass
stock-farm--when she was wheedling from her father a winter in Washington.
They envied her often when they had the very thing she wanted--or, at
least, she didn't have it. They enlarged on her popularity, and she
answered, "Oh yes, nice boys, most of them, but--"
She had always said, "_When_ I marry," not "_if_," and had said it much as
she said, "When I grow up." And, yes, she believed in fate: that everybody
who belonged to you would find you out; but--it was only hospitable to
meet them half-way! So her admirers found her in the beginning hopefully
interested, and in the end rather mournfully unconvinced. Her regret seemed
so genuinely on her own account as well as theirs that they usually carried
off a very kind feeling for her.
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