lder sister in her comely old-maidenhood. Nobody
could doubt her good qualities, and could it be questioned that for a
man of fifty, if he was to do anything so foolish, a woman not quite
forty was a thousand times more eligible than a creature in blue ribbons?
Still the unfortunate Rector did not seem to see it: his face grew
longer and longer--he made no answer whatever to his mother's address;
while she, with a spice of natural female malice against the common
enemy triumphing for the moment over the mother's admiration of her son,
sat wickedly enjoying his distress, and aggravating it. His dismay and
perplexity amused this wicked old woman beyond measure.

"I have no doubt that younger girl takes a pleasure in deluding her
admirers," said Mrs Proctor; "she's a wicked little flirt, and likes
nothing better than to see her power. I know very well how such people
do; but, my dear," continued this false old lady, scarcely able to
restrain her laughter, "if I were you, I would be very civil to Miss
Wodehouse. You may depend upon it, Morley, that's a very superior
person. She is not very young, to be sure, but you are not very young
yourself. She would make a nice wife--not too foolish, you know, nor
fanciful. Ah! I like Miss Wodehouse, my dear."

The Rector stumbled up to his feet hastily, and pointed to a table at
a little distance, on which some books were lying. Then he went and
brought them to her table. "I've brought you some new books," he shouted
into her ear. It was the only way his clumsy ingenuity could fall upon
for bringing this most distasteful conversation to an end.

The old lady's eyes were dancing with fun and a little mischief, but,
notwithstanding, she could not be so false to her nature as to show no
interest in the books. She turned them over with lively remarks and
comment. "But for all that, Morley, I would not have you forget Miss
Wodehouse," she said, when her early bedtime came. "Give it a thought
now and then, and consider the whole matter. It is not a thing to be
done rashly; but still you know you are settled now, and you ought to be
thinking of settling for life."

With this parting shaft she left him. The troubled Rector, instead of
sitting up to his beloved studies, went early to bed that night, and was
pursued by nightmares through his unquiet slumbers. Settling for life!
Alas! there floated before him vain visions of that halcyon world he had
left--that sacred soil at All-Souls, where