Peter, you'd rather I'd saved you for this than anything that might have happened ?" "Much rather, Ellen." It had surprised him in the telling, to see how accurately his sister had gauged the worldly advantage of his marriage.

If Eunice Goodward had been a piece of furniture, Ellen couldn't have appraised her better at her obvious worth: beauty and character and family and the mysterious cachet of society.

Clarice had been at work there, too, he suspected.
Miss Goodward fitted in Ellen's mind's eye into her brother's life and fortune as a picture into its frame.
"I'm very glad you feel that way about it, Ellen," he said again; he was on the point of telling her about the House of Shining Walls.

The material from which he had drawn its earliest furnishings lay all about them, the receding blue of the summer sky, the aged, arching apple boughs.

The scent of the wilding rose came faintly in from the country road--suddenly his sister surprised him with a flash of rare insight.
"I guess there can't anything keep us from the best except ourselves," she said.