Kate need not have been told that.

Right instincts and Bates economy would have taught her the same thing, but she had a perverse streak in her nature.

She had SEEN herself in the hat.
The milliner, who knew enough of the world and human nature to know how to sell Kate the hat, when she never intended to buy it, and knew she should not in the way she did, had said that before fall it would bring her a carriage, which put into bald terms meant a rich husband.

Now Kate liked her school and she gave it her full attention; she had done, and still intended to keep on doing, first-class work in the future; but her school, or anything pertaining to it, was not worth mentioning beside Nancy Ellen's HOME, and the deep understanding and strong feeling that showed so plainly between her and Robert Gray.

Kate expected to marry by the time she was twenty or soon after; all Bates girls had, most of them had married very well indeed.