is very hard to feel one's self
bound to fulfil a contract of this kind."

"Hard! Well, now, I should think it easy. Mr. Linmere is all that any
reasonable woman could wish. Not too old, nor yet too young; about
forty-five, which is just the age for a man to marry; good-looking,
intelligent and wealthy--what more could you ask?"

"You forgot that I do not love him--that he does not love me."

"Love! tush! Don't let me hear anything about that. I loath the name.
Margie, love ruined my only son! For love he disobeyed me and I disowned
him, I have not spoken his name for years! Your father approved of Mr.
Linmere, and while you were yet a child you were betrothed. And when your
father died, what did you promise him on his deathbed?"

Margie grew white as the ribbons at her throat.

"I promised him that I would _try_ and fulfil his requirements."

"That you would _try_! Yes. And that was equal to giving an unqualified
assent. You know the conditions of the will, I believe?"

"I do. If I marry without your consent under the age of twenty-one, I
forfeit my patrimony. And I am nineteen now. And I shall not marry
without your consent."

"Margie, you must marry Mr. Linmere. Do not hope to do differently. It
is your duty. He has lived single all these years waiting for you. He
will be kind to you, and you will be happy. Prepare to receive him with
becoming respect."

Mr. Trevlyn considered his duty performed, and went out for his customary
walk.

At dinner Mr. Linmere arrived. Margie met him with cold composure. He
scanned her fair face and almost faultless form, with the eye of a
connoisseur, and congratulated himself on the fortune which was to give
him, such a bride without the perplexity of a wooing. She was beautiful
and attractive, and he had feared she might be ugly, which would have
been a dampener on his satisfaction. True, her wealth would have
counter-balanced any degree of personal deformity; but Mr. Paul Linmere
admired beauty, and liked to have pretty things around him.

To tell the truth, he was sadly in need of money. It was fortunate that
his old friend, Mr. Harrison, Margie's dead father, had taken it into his
head to plight his daughter's troth to him while she was yet a child. Mr.
Harrison had been an eccentric man; and from the fact that in many points
of religious belief he and Mr. Paul Linmere agreed, (for both were
miserable skeptics,) he valued him above all other men, and thought his
daught