d soon pass over,
Dolly faintly suggested.

"It don't look like it," said Mrs. Copley miserably, "and your father
don't look like it. Here we are down in this desert, you and I, to keep
us out of the way, and where we will cost as near nothing as can be;
and we can't pay that! Do you know nothing about it, Dolly? how it has
come about?"

"I couldn't ask father such a question, mother, you know."

"And what is to become of me!" Mrs. Copley went on; "when travelling is
the thing I need. And what is to become of you, Dolly? Nobody to be
seen, or to see you, but St. Leger. Have you made up your mind to be
content with him? Will you have him, Dolly? and is that the way your
father is going to take care of you?"

Poor Mrs. Copley, having so long swallowed her troubles in secret,
dreading to give pain to Dolly, now that her mouth was once opened
poured them forth relentlessly. Why not? the subject was broached at
last, and having spoken, she might go on to speak. And poor Dolly, full
of her own anxieties, did not know where to begin to quiet those of her
mother.

"Mr. St. Leger is nothing to me," she said, however, in answer to Mrs.
Copley's last suggestions.

"He thinks he is."

"Then he is very foolish," said Dolly, reddening.

"It is you that are foolish, and you just do not know any better. I
don't think, Dolly, that it would be at all a bad thing for
you;--perhaps it would be the very best; though I'd rather have you
marry one of our own people; but St. Leger is rich, very rich, I
suppose; and your father has got mixed up with them somehow, and I
suppose that would settle everything. St. Leger is handsome, too; he
has a nice face; he has beautiful eyes; and he is a gentleman."

"His face wants strength."

"That's no matter. I begin to believe, Dolly, that you have wit enough
for two."

"I am not speaking of wit; I mean _strength;_ and I should never like
any man that hadn't it; not like him in the way you mean, mother."

"Strength? what sort of strength?"

"I mean manliness; power to do right; power over himself and others;
power over the wrong, to put it down, and over the right, to lift it up
and give it play. I don't know that I can tell you what I mean, mother;
but that is my notion of a man."

"You are romantic, I am afraid, Dolly. You have been reading novels too
much."

"What novels, mother? I have not read any, except Scott's and Miss
Austen's and 'The Scottish Chiefs.'"

"Well, you have got