nce,--"still, as you must
have seen much of my own sister--"

Mainwaring, while she spoke, was at work on a button on his gaiter
(gaiters were then worn tight at the ankle); the effort brought the
blood to his forehead.

"But," he said, still stooping at his occupation, "you were so little
intimate with your sister; I feared to offend. Family differences are so
difficult to approach."

Lucretia was satisfied at the moment; for so vast was her stake in
Mainwaring's heart, so did her whole heart and soul grapple to the rock
left serene amidst the deluge, that she habitually and resolutely thrust
from her mind all the doubts that at times invaded it.

"I know," she would often say to herself,--"I know he does not love as
I do; but man never can, never ought to love as woman! Were I a man,
I should scorn myself if I could be so absorbed in one emotion as I am
proud to be now,--I, poor woman! I know," again she would think,--"I
know how suspicious and distrustful I am; I must not distrust him,--I
shall only irritate, I may lose him: I dare not distrust,--it would be
too dreadful."

Thus, as a system vigorously embraced by a determined mind, she had
schooled and forced herself into reliance on her lover. His words now,
we say, satisfied her at the moment; but afterwards, in absence, they
were recalled, in spite of herself,--in the midst of fears, shapeless
and undefined. Involuntarily she began to examine the countenance, the
movements, of her sister,--to court Susan's society more than she had
done; for her previous indifference had now deepened into bitterness.
Susan, the neglected and despised, had become her equal,--nay, more
than her equal: Susan's children would have precedence to her own in the
heritage of Laughton! Hitherto she had never deigned to talk to her in
the sweet familiarity of sisters so placed; never deigned to confide to
her those feelings for her future husband which burned lone and ardent
in the close vault of her guarded heart. Now, however, she began to name
him, wind her arm into Susan's, talk of love and home, and the days to
come; and as she spoke, she read the workings of her sister's face.
That part of the secret grew clear almost at the first glance. Susan
loved,--loved William Mainwaring; but was it not a love hopeless and
unreturned? Might not this be the cause that had made Mainwaring so
reserved? He might have seen, or conjectured, a conquest he had not
sought; and hence, with manly de