“Well, well!” said my aunt. “I only ask. I don’t depreciate her. Poor little couple! And so you think you were formed for one another, and are to go through a party-supper-table kind of life, like two pretty pieces of confectionery, do you, Trot?”

She asked me this so kindly, and with such a gentle air, half playful and half sorrowful, that I was quite touched.

“We are young and inexperienced, aunt, I know,” I replied; “and I dare say we say and think a good deal that is rather foolish. But we love one another truly, I am sure. If I thought Dora could ever love anybody else, or cease to love me; or that I could ever love anybody else, or cease to love her; I don’t know what I should do⁠—go out of my mind, I think!”

“Ah, Trot!” said my aunt, shaking her head, and smiling gravely; “blind, blind, blind!”