she spoke.

Old Mr. Rushleigh saw something in this that began to seem to him more
than mere maidenly shyness.

By and by, Margaret called her brother to sing with her.

"Come, Faithie," said Paul, drawing her gently by the hand. "I can't
sing unless you go, too."

Faith went; more, it seemed, of his will, than her own.

"How does that appear to you?" said Mr. Rushleigh to his wife. "Is it
all right? Does the child care for Paul?"

"Care!" exclaimed the mother, almost surprised into too audible speech.
"How can she help caring? And hasn't it grown up from childhood with
them? What put such a question into your head? I should as soon think of
doubting whether I cared for you."

It was easier for the father to doubt, jealously, for his son, than for
the mother to conceive the possibility of indifference in the woman her
boy had chosen.

"Besides," added Mrs. Rushleigh, "why, else, should she have accepted
him? I _know_ Faith Gartney is not mercenary, or worldly ambitious."

"I am quite sure of that, as well," answered her husband. "It is no
doubt of her motive or her worth--I can't say it is really a doubt of
anything; but, Gertrude, she must not marry the boy unless her whole
heart is in it! A sharp stroke is better than a lifelong pain."

"I'm sure I can't tell what has come over you! She can't ever have
thought of anybody else! And she seems quite one of ourselves."

"Yes; that's just the uncertainty," replied Mr. Rushleigh. "Whether it
isn't as much Margaret, and you and I, as Paul. Whether she fully knows
what she is about. She can't marry the family, you know. We shall die,
and go off, and Heaven knows what; Paul must be the whole world to her,
or nothing. I hope he hasn't hurried her--or let her hurry herself."

"Hurry! She has had years to make up her mind in!"

Mrs. Rushleigh, woman as she was, would not understand.

"We shall go, in three days," said Paul, when he stood in the moonlight
with Faith at the little white gate under the elms, after driving her
home; "and I must have you all the time to myself, until then!"

Faith wondered if it were right that she shouldn't quite care to be "had
all the time to himself until then"? Whether such demonstrativeness and
exclusiveness of affection was ever a little irksome to others as to
her?

Faith thought and questioned, often, what other girls might feel in
positions like her own, and tried to judge herself by them; it
absolutely never occurred to h