Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/75

 "eligibility" from both her parents. Her mother has a clear, expressive, sunlit loveliness; but Dorothy's beauty has in it an element of subtlety—from her father—and a suggestion of sorcery and peril. She has her mother's complexion but her father's eyes. It is the unexpected combination and contrast that fascinates one: the filleted blond hair and the fluent roses of the fair skin, with the brown eyes, dark yet full of lambent lights—eyes of which the centres seem gleaming paths, leading into shadows where a man might easily wander and be lost.

"And why won't you marry?" I pursued; for as we were driving at a good speed over a rough road, I was sure the watchful maternal ears could not overhear us. And so was Dorothy.

"Oh, I don't like the choice," she said, "that marriage presents—nowadays."

"A choice!" I repeated with irreverent levity. "You haven't come to that yet, I trust. But what do you think the choice is going to be?"

"You may laugh," said Dorothy, "but we all know well enough. We don't have to wait till we have made it, to know what the choice is. It is either a 'good American husband,' ten or twenty years older than you, who has a fine position and