m!"

"Not Phoebe!" exclaimed Rhoda again, looking from one to the other very
much as Phoebe had done. "Why, Phoebe, what does all this mean?"

"Oh, Rhoda, I can't tell you!" said Phoebe, sobbing, for the reaction
had come. "Mother, you will have to tell her. I can't."

"Of course I shall tell her," calmly answered Mrs Latrobe. "I came for
that very thing. Rhoda, my dear, I am sure you are a maid of sense and
discretion."

"I hope so, Madam."

"So do I, child: and therefore you will hear me calmly, and not fly into
passions like that silly maid yonder. My dear, you must have
remembered, I am certain, that when you promised yourself to Mr Welles,
you were in a very different situation from now."

Rhoda only bowed. Perhaps, on that subject, she was afraid to trust her
voice.

"And, of course, it has also occurred to you, my dear, that this being
the case, you could not in honour hold Mr Welles bound to you any
longer, if he wished to be free?"

"But we don't wish to be free," said Rhoda, in a puzzled tone.

"You are mistaken, my dear, so far as one of you is concerned. Perhaps
it had been yet more graceful had you been the one to loose the bond:
yet Mr Welles has done it with so infinite a grace and spirit that I
can scarce regret your omission. My dear, you are now entirely free.
He sets you completely at liberty, and has retired from all pretension
to you."

"But what, Aunt Anne--I do not understand you!" exclaimed Rhoda, in
accents of bewildered amazement, which had a ring of agony beneath, as
though she was struggling against the comprehension of a grief she was
reluctant to face.

"Surely, my dear, you must have understood me," said Mrs Latrobe. "Mr
Welles resigns his suit to you."

"He has given me up?" bursts from Rhoda's lips.

"He has entirely given you up. You cannot have really expected anything
else?"

"I thought _he_ was true!" said Rhoda through her set teeth. "Are you
sure you understood him? Phoebe, you tell me,--did he mean that?"

"O Rhoda! poor Rhoda! I am afraid he did!" said Phoebe, as distinctly
as tears would let her.

"But, my dear," interposed Mrs Latrobe, remonstratingly, "surely you
cannot be surprised? When Mr Welles engaged himself to you, it was (as
he thought) to the heiress of a large estate. You could not expect him
to encumber himself with a wife who brought him less than one year's
income of his own. 'Tis not reasonable, child. No man in his senses