ngs towards him would
remain uninfluenced by anything that anyone might say. All the same, it
might be as well, having regard for what had happened, that the marriage
should take place with the least possible delay.

She took this letter down to the post-office herself, and when she
returned she entered the drawing-room and told Mrs. Barton what she had
done.

'I wish you had shown me the letter before you sent it. There is nothing
we need advice about so much as a letter.'

'Yes, mother,' replied Alice, deceived by the gentleness of Mrs.
Barton's manner; 'but we seemed to hold such widely different views on
this matter that there did not seem to be any use in discussing it.'

'Mother and daughter should never hold different views; my children's
interests are my interests--what interests have I now but theirs?'

'Oh, mother! Then you will consent to this marriage?'

Mrs. Barton's face always changed expression before a direct question.
'My dear, I would consent to anything that would make you happy; but it
seems to me impossible that you could be happy with Dr. Reed. I wonder
how you could like him. You do not know--I mean, you do not realize what
the intimacies of married life are. They are often hard to put up with,
no matter who the man may be, but with one who is not a gentleman--'

'But, mother, Dr. Reed seems to me to be in every way a gentleman. Who
is there more gentlemanly in the country? I am sure that from every
point of view he is preferable to Mr. Adair or Sir Charles, or Sir
Richard or Mr. Ryan, or his cousin, Mr. Lynch.'

'My darling child, I would sooner see you laid in your coffin than
married to either Mr. Ryan or Mr. Lynch; but that is not the question.
It is, whether you had not better wait for a few years before you throw
yourself away on such a man as Dr. Reed. I know that you have been
greatly tried; nothing is so trying to a girl as to come out with her
sister who is the belle of the season, and I must say you have shown a
great deal of pluck; and perhaps I haven't been considerate enough. But
I, too, have had my disappointments--Olive's affairs did not, as you
know, turn out as well as I had expected, and to see you now marry one
who is so much beneath us!'

'Mother, dear, he is not beneath us. There is no one who has earned his
career but Dr. Reed; he owes nothing to anyone; he has done it all by
his own exertions; and now he has bought a London practice.'

'Then you do not love him;