person and billing and cooing might
go together, it would be very pleasant. But she knew there was danger
in such an idea. The billing and cooing might lead altogether to
evil. But there could be no doubt that she would do good service if
she married her cousin; her money would go to good purposes, and her
care to those children would be invaluable. They were her cousins,
and would it not be sweet to make of herself a sacrifice?

And then--Reader! remember that she was no saint, and that hitherto
very little opportunity had been given to her of learning to
discriminate true metal from dross. Then--she thought of Mr Samuel
Rubb, junior. Mr Samuel Rubb, junior, was a handsome man, about
her own age; and she felt almost sure that Mr Samuel Rubb, junior,
admired her. He was not worn out with life; he was not broken with
care; he would look forward into the world, and hope for things to
come. One thing she knew to be true--he was not a gentleman. But
then, why should she care for that? The being a gentleman was not
everything. As for herself, might there not be strong reason to doubt
whether those who were best qualified to judge would call her a lady?
Her surviving brother kept an oilcloth shop, and the brother with
whom she had always lived had been so retired from the world that
neither he nor she knew anything of its ways. If love could be
gained, and anything of romance; if some active living mode of life
could thereby be opened to her, would it not be well for her to give
up that idea of being a lady? Hitherto her rank had simply enabled
her to become a Stumfoldian; and then she remembered that Mr
Maguire's squint was very terrible! How she should live, what she
should do with herself, were matters to her of painful thought; but
she looked in the glass again, and resolved that she would decline
the honour of becoming Mrs Ball.

On the following morning she wrote her letter, and it was written
thus:

7 Paragon, Littlebath, January, 186--.

MY DEAR JOHN,

I have been thinking a great deal about what you said to
me, and I have made up my mind that I ought not to become
your wife. I know that the honour you have proposed to me
is very great, and that I may seem to be ungrateful in
declining it; but I cannot bring myself to feel that sort
of love for you which a wife should have for her husband.
I hope this will not make you displeased with me. It ought
not to do so, as my feelings to