If I had married you then--if my entreaties had prevailed--I should never have made you happy.

My dear Agnes has taught me this." And this cherished letter was Dinah's treasure.
She and Dr.Fraser seldom met--not more than once a year--but from time to time he wrote to her, and his wife and children were very dear to her.
"I cannot understand it," Elizabeth had more than once said.

But Dinah could furnish no explanation: she only knew that it was so--that her life was a happy one, and that she asked for nothing more.
Douglas and his wife were her dearest friends, and Lettice, her sweet god-daughter, ranked next to Cedric in her heart.
With so many to love, how could life fail to satisfy her! "And it so short--so short," she would say to herself.

"One sees so little of one's friends here; but one will have plenty of time to enjoy them in Paradise." Continuity of life--continuity of love, this was Dinah's simple creed, but it kept her young and happy.
"Dinah has the secret of perpetual youth," Elizabeth would say to her friend Mrs.Godfrey; but she generally ended with a sigh, "If only I were like her!".