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Show HIS OTHER ENGAGEMENT schedule time, while she cherished in her heart the dream of a romance in the style of "The Prisoner of Zenda." Naturally, such a many-sided young woman would be difficult to please; and a number of eligible young men had acquired personal knowledge of the fact. But the difficulty seemed to attract Chichester. He went at it in his bold, decided manner, with his chin forward; and he conquered. Mter the February campaign no one was surprised to hear, in March, that the engagement of Miss Ethel Asham to Mr. Bolton Chichester was announced, and that the wedding would occur in June. The place was not specified. Conjectures were hazarded tlmt it might be Dunfermline Abbey, the Castle of Chillon, Bridal Veil Falls in the Yosemite, the Natural Bridge in Virginia, or St. George's, Hanover Square. Little Pop Wilson, the well-known dialect novelist of tliC southeastern part of northern Kentucky, suggested that there was something to be said in favor of the Mammoth Cave-" always cool, you know. Artificial lights, pulpit rock, stalactites- all that sort of thing!" Even this was felt to 6!l HIS OTHER ENGAGEMENT be within the bounds of possibility. The one thing that was not open to doubt was tl1at the wedding would certainly be celebrated in an ' riginal way and a romantic place, at precisely the appointed hour. If anyone had foretold tilat it would be broken off, and that the reason given would be "another engagement" on the part of Mr. Bolton Chichester, we should have laughed in the face of such a ridiculous prophet and advised him to take something to cool his brain. Yet this is exactly what happened; and the secret of that other engagement is the subject of this brief, simple, but I hope not unmoral narrative. Chichester had been with the Ashams at the residential farm-house in West Smithfield during the first fortnight of April, and hnd devoted tl1e remainder of that showery month to his affairs in the city, diversified with a few afternoons of trout-fishing on Long Island: for like all the members of the Petrine Club he was a sincere angler. It was during this period that Ethel took up, in her daily correspondence with him, the question of the cruelty of angling. She was not yet quite clear in her mind upon the subject, but 63 |