not. I wanted you, mother, a dozen times a day, and I was
half-afraid to come back to you, lest I should find Miss Jane married or
at least engaged."

"She is neither one nor the other, or I am much mistaken. Whatever are
you afraid of? Jane Harlow is only a woman beautiful and up to date, she
is not a 'goddess excellently fair' like the woman you are always
singing about, not she! I'm sure I often wonder where she got her
beauty and high spirit. Her father was just a proud hanger-on to his
rich relations; he lived and died fighting his wants and his debts. Her
mother is very near as badly off--a poor, wuttering, little creature,
always fearing and trembling for the day she never saw."

"Perhaps this poverty and dependence may make her marry Lord Thirsk. He
is rich enough to get the girl he wants."

"His money would not buy Jane, if she did not like him; and she doesn't
like him."

"How do you know that, mother?"

"I asked her. While we were drinking our tea, I asked her if she were
going to make herself Lady Thirsk. She made fun of him. She mocked the
very idea. She said he had no chin worth speaking of and no back to his
head and so not a grain of _forthput_ in him of any kind. 'Why, he can't
play a game of tennis,' she said, 'and when he loses it he nearly cries,
and what do you think, Mrs. Hatton, of a lover like that?' Those were
her words, John."

"And you believe she was in earnest?"

"Yes, I do. Jane is too proud and too brave a girl to lie--unless----"

"Unless what, mother?"

"It was to her interest."

"Tell me all she said. Her words are life or death to me."

"They are nothing of the kind. Be ashamed of yourself, John Hatton."

"You are right, mother. My life and death are by the will of God, but I
can say that my happiness or wretchedness is in Jane Harlow's power."

"Your happiness is in your own power. Her 'no' might be a disappointment
in hours you weren't busy among your looms and cotton bales, or talking
of discounts and the money market, but its echo would grow fainter every
hour of your life, and then you would meet the other girl, whose 'yes'
would put the 'no' forever out of your memory."

"Well, mother, you have given me hope, and I have been comforted by you
'as one whom his mother comforteth.' If the dear girl is not to be won
by Thirsk's title and money, I will see what love can do."

"I'll tell you, John, what love can do"--and she went to a handsome set
of hanging book shel