Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/310

 once, and dies once; and that 's an end of it. Now, your girl who is in love half-a-dozen times before her marriage has learned so much of the mutability of things, of men in especial, that she is pretty safe to repeat the sensation after matrimony."

"Other things being equal, I admit there is some truth in what you say; but in this case look at the immense disadvantages," the General demurred. "Is Feuardent in a position to marry my daughter? Is he disinterestedly attached to her? Though in our part of the world I am not a rich man, nor my daughter an heiress, here, where the scale is so different, her fortune may be an important item in the young man's calculations."

"There you wrong Robert, there you wrong our society, General Ruysdale. Thank God, sir! we have not yet arrived, in this community, at that stage of social development—decomposition, I call—it where marriages of reason are made. No, sir, my young friend is able to marry for love; and if you disinherited your daughter to-morrow, he would ask you again for her hand."

The Colonel buttoned up his coat to the very chin, as was his habit in moments of excitement, and rubbed imaginary dust from the sleeve of his well-brushed, threadbare coat.