Carrol's next visit was looked for with a good deal of interest. Naturally it was thought that he would know all about his friend's singular conduct. But he professed to be as much puzzled as Alice. "He supposed it was something about Mrs. Bethune; he had always told Smith not to take a pretty, rich woman like her into his calculations. For his part, if he had been desirous of marrying an heiress, and felt that he had a gift that way, he should have looked out a rich German girl; they had less nonsense about them," etc.
That was how the affair ended as far as Eleanor was concerned. Of course she suffered, but she was not of that generation of women who parade their suffering. Beautiful and self-respecting, she was, above all, endowed with physical self-control. Even Alice was spared the hysterical sobbings and faintings and other signs of pathological distress common to weak women.
Perhaps she was more silent and more irritable than usual, but Eleanor Bethune's heartache for love never led her to the smallest social impropriety. Whatever she suffered, she did not refuse the proper mixture of colors in her hat, or neglect her tithe of the mint, anise and cummin due to her position.
Eleanor's reticence, however, had this good effect--it compelled Alice to talk Smith's singular behavior over with Carrol; and somehow, in discussing Smith, they got to understand each other; so that, after all, it was Alice's and not Eleanor's bridal shopping that was to do. And there is something very assuaging to grief in this occupation. Before it was completed, Eleanor had quite recovered her placid, sunshiny temper.
"Consolation, thy name is satin and lace!" said Alice, thankfully, to herself, as she saw Eleanor so tired and happy about the wedding finery.
At first Alice had been quite sure that she would go to Paris, and nowhere else; but Eleanor noticed that in less than a week Carrol's influence was paramount. "We have got a better idea, Eleanor--quite a novel one," she said, one morning. "We are going to make our bridal trip in Carrol's yacht!"
"Carrol's and _mine too_, of course. Carrol says it is the jolliest life. You leave all your cares and bills on shore behind you. You issue your own sailing orders, and sail away into space with an easy conscience"
