ne."

"You'd refuse your consent?"

"Of course I would! Must your niece turn adventuress, and go off to
Heaven knows where, with God knows whom? Must she link her fortunes to
a man who confessedly cannot face the world at home, but must go to
the end of the earth for a bare subsistence? What is there in this man
himself, in his character, station, abilities, and promise, that are to
recompense such devotion as this? And what will your own conscience say
to the first letter from India, full of depression and sorrow, regrets
shadowed forth, if not avowed openly, for the happy days when you were
all together, and contrasts of that time, with the dreary dulness of an
uncheered existence? _I_ know something of India, and I can tell you it
is a country where life is only endurable by splendour. Poverty in such
a land is not merely privation, it is to live in derision and contempt.
Everyone knows how many rupees you have per month, and you are measured
by your means in everything. That seven hundred a year, which sounds
plausibly enough, is something like two hundred at home, if so much.
Of course you can override all these considerations, and, as the vicar
says, 'Let the heart take precedence of the head.' _My_ cold and
worldly counsels will not stand comparison with _his_ fine and generous
sentiments, no more than I could make as good a figure in the pulpit
as he could. But, perhaps, as a mere man of the world, I am his equal;
though there are little significant hints in that very letter that show
the old parson is very wide awake."

"I never detected them," said she, curtly.

"Perhaps not, but rely upon one thing. It was not such a letter as
he would have addressed to a man. If _I_, for instance, had been the
guardian instead of you, the whole tone of the epistle would have been
very different."

"Do you think so?"

"Think so! I know it I had not read ten lines till I said to myself,
'This was meant for very different eyes from mine.'"

"If I thought that--"

"Go on," said he; "finish, and let me hear what you would say or do,
when arrived at the conclusion I have come to."

So far, however, from having come to any decision, she really did not
see in the remotest distance anything to guide her to one.

"What would you advise me to do, Mr. Calvert?" said she, at last, and
after a pause of some time.

"Refer him to me; say the point is too difficult for you; that while
your feelings for your niece might overbear