Hugh's faults--that she believed in him
with all a loving woman's credulity: and yet as he smiled he sighed.

He knew his sister well, the simplicity and strength of her nature,
the unselfishness and purity of her aims--few women had so high a
standard--and he reverenced as well as loved her, for every day showed
him new beauties in her character. But his knowledge of his sister
made him doubt the wisdom of her choice; in his heart he had never
really approved of her engagement with Hugh Redmond. Hugh was a
capital fellow, he told himself; a pleasant companion, lovable in his
way, and not without his special gifts, but he was not worthy of
Margaret.

Raby had not always been blind, and his intimacy with Hugh Redmond had
given him plenty of opportunity to judge truly of his friend's
defects. He knew Hugh was manly and generous, but he was also weak and
impulsive, hot-tempered and prone to restlessness; and he marveled
sadly how Margaret's calm, grand nature should center its affections
and hopes on such an unstable character as Hugh Redmond.

"She will never be happy with him," he said to himself; "one day he
must disappoint her. Oh, I know well there is no harm in him; every
one would call him a good fellow; he is clever, he has plenty of
pluck, he has gentlemanly feelings, and he worships Margaret. But in
my opinion the wife should not be superior to the husband; if there
must be weakness, it should be on the other side." And here Raby sighed
and gave himself up to melancholy and more personal broodings, and he
thought how strange and baffling were the perversities of human
nature, and how hearts cleaved to each other--in spite of a hundred
faults and blemishes--as Margaret's cleaved to Hugh Redmond.

No, there was no love without suffering, he thought; even happy love
had its thrills and tremors of doubt, its hours of anticipatory fears.
A little while ago and his own life had stretched before him, bright,
hopeful and full of enjoyment, and then a cloud had blotted out all
the goodly land of promise, and he had been left a poor prisoner of
hope on the dim borders, led in paths that he truly had not
known--mysterious paths of suffering and patience.

Raby had not answered his sister's reproachful speech, but he had
taken her hand and pressed it, as though asking her pardon.

"I wish you thought better of Hugh," she said softly, as she felt his
caressing gesture; and Raby smiled again.

"I do think well of him.