aking you his wife,
and I don't think will ever hold up his head again if you will
not consent. I write now instead of John, because he is so much
oppressed. I wish you had remained here, because then we could have
talked it over quietly. Would it not be better for you to be here
than living alone at Littlebath? for I cannot call that little girl
who is at school anything of a companion. Could you not leave her as
a boarder, and come to us for a month? You would not be forced to
pledge yourself to anything further; but we could talk it over."

It need hardly be said that Miss Mackenzie, as she read this,
declared to herself that she had no desire to talk over her own
position with Lady Ball any further.

"John is afraid," the letter went on to say, "that he offended you
by the manner of his proposition; and that he said too much about
the children, and not enough about his own affection. Of course
he loves you dearly. If you knew him as I do, which of course you
can't as yet, though I hope you will, you would be aware that no
consideration, either of money or about the children, would induce
him to propose to any woman unless he loved her. You may take my word
for that."

There was a great deal more in the letter of the same kind, in which
Lady Ball pressed her own peculiar arguments; but I need hardly say
that they did not prevail with Miss Mackenzie. If the son could not
induce his cousin to marry him, the mother certainly never would do
so. It did not take her long to answer her aunt's letter. She said
that she must, with many thanks, decline for the present to return
to the Cedars, as the charge which she had taken of her niece made
her presence at Littlebath necessary. As to the answer which she had
given to John, she was afraid she could only say that it must stand.
She had felt a little angry with Lady Ball; and though she tried not
to show this in the tone of her letter, she did show it.

"If I were you I would never see her or speak to her again," said
Lady Ball to her son.

"Very likely I never shall," he replied.

"Has your love-making with that old maid gone wrong, John?" the
father asked.

But John Ball was used to his father's ill nature, and never answered
it.

Nothing special to our story occurred at Littlebath during the next
two or three months, except that Miss Mackenzie became more and
more intimate with Miss Baker, and more and more anxious to form an
acquaintance with Miss Todd. With al