ur
preparations; but to-night he has changed his mind; he wants our wedding
to be in April. I have not given in--not yet. Two months seem so short."

"You will have plenty of time to prepare in two months, dear; and April
is a nice time of year. If I were you, I would not oppose Hinton."

Charlotte smiled. She knew in her heart of hearts she should not oppose
him. But being a true woman, she laid hold of a futile excuse.

"My book will not be finished. I like to do well what I do at all."

Her father was very proud of this coming book; but now, patting her
hand, he said softly,--

"The book can keep. Put it out of your head for the present; you can get
it done later."

"Then I shall leave you two months sooner, father; does that not weigh
with you at all?"

"You are only going for your honeymoon, darling; and the sooner you go
the sooner you will return."

"Vanquished on all points," said Charlotte, smiling radiantly, and then
she sat still, looking into the fire.

Long, long afterwards, through much of sorrow--nay, even of
tribulation--did her thoughts wander back to that golden evening of her
life.

"You remind me of my own mother to-night," said her father presently.

Charlotte and her father had many times spoken of this dead mother. Now
she said softly,--

"I want, I pray, I long to make as good a wife as you tell me she did."

"With praying, longing, and striving, it will come Charlotte. That was
how she succeeded."

"And there is another thing," continued Charlotte, suddenly changing her
position and raising her bright eyes to her old father's face. "You had
a good wife and I had a good mother. If ever I die, as my own mother
died, and leave behind me a little child, as she did, I pray that my
John may be as good a father to it as you have been to me."

But in answer to this little burst of daughterly love, a strange thing
happened. Mr. Harman grew very white, so white that he gasped for
breath.

"Water, a little water," he said, feebly; and when Charlotte had brought
it to him and he raised it to his lips, and the color and power to
breathe had come back again, he said slowly and with great pain,--

"Never, never pray that your husband may be like me, Charlotte. To be
worthy of you at all, he must be a much better and a very different
man."

CHAPTER XVII.

HAPPINESS NOT JUSTICE.

Hinton left Mr. Harman's house in a very perplexed frame of mind. It
seemed to him that in that one