And now Lily Dale was engaged to be married, and the days of her
playfulness were over. It sounds sad, this sentence against her, but
I fear that it must be regarded as true. And when I think that it
is true,--when I see that the sportiveness and kitten-like gambols
of girlhood should be over, and generally are over, when a girl
has given her troth, it becomes a matter of regret to me that the
feminine world should be in such a hurry after matrimony. I have,
however, no remedy to offer for the evil; and, indeed, am aware that
the evil, if there be an evil, is not well expressed in the words I
have used. The hurry is not for matrimony, but for love. Then, the
love once attained, matrimony seizes it for its own, and the evil is
accomplished.

And Lily Dale was engaged to be married to Adolphus Crosbie,--to
Apollo Crosbie, as she still called him, confiding her little joke
to his own ears. And to her he was an Apollo, as a man who is loved
should be to the girl who loves him. He was handsome, graceful,
clever, self-confident, and always cheerful when she asked him to be
cheerful. But he had also his more serious moments, and could talk
to her of serious matters. He would read to her, and explain to her
things which had hitherto been too hard for her young intelligence.
His voice, too, was pleasant, and well under command. It could be
pathetic if pathos were required, or ring with laughter as merry as
her own. Was not such a man fit to be an Apollo to such a girl, when
once the girl had acknowledged to herself that she loved him?

She had acknowledged it to herself, and had acknowledged it to
him,--as the reader will perhaps say without much delay. But the
courtship had so been carried on that no delay had been needed. All