of a clergyman's running away to be married; but they must have
sometimes done it. Come, I don't believe you'd have to plead hard with
Miss Bentley, and Mrs. March and I will aid and abet you to the limit of
our small ability. I'm sure that if I wrap up warm against the night
air, she will let me go and help you hold the rope-ladder taut."

X.

It was not very reverent to his cloth, or his recent tragical mood, but
Glendenning was not offended; he laughed with a sheepish pleasure, and
that evening he came with Miss Bentley to call upon us. The visit passed
without unusual confidences until they rose to go, when she said
abruptly to me: "I feel that we both owe you a great deal, Mr. March.
Arthur has been telling me of your talk this afternoon, and I think that
what you said was all so wise and true! I don't mean," she added, "your
suggestion about putting an end to the anomaly!" and she and Glendenning
both laughed.

My wife said, "That was very wicked, and I have scolded him for thinking
of such a thing." She had, indeed, forgotten that she had put it in my
head, and made me wholly responsible for it.

"Then you must scold me too a little, Mrs. March," said the girl, "for
I've sometimes wondered if I couldn't work Arthur up to the point of
making me run away with him," which was a joke that wonderfully amused
us all.

I said, "I shouldn't think it would be so difficult;" and she retorted:

"Oh, you've no idea how obdurate clergymen are;" and then she went on,
seriously, to thank me for talking Glendenning out of his morbid mood.
With the frankness sometimes characteristic of her she said that if he
had released her, it would have made no difference--she should still
have felt herself bound to him; and until he should tell her that he no
longer cared for her, she should feel that he was bound to her. I saw no
great originality in this reproduction of my own ideas. But when Miss
Bentley added that she believed her mother herself would be shocked and
disappointed if they were to give each other up, I was aware of being in
the presence of a curious psychological fact. I so wholly lost myself in
the inquiry it invited that I let the talk flow on round me unheeded
while I questioned whether Mrs. Bentley did not derive a satisfaction
from her own and her daughter's mutual opposition which she could never
have enjoyed from their perfect agreement. She had made a certain
concession in consenting to the engagement, and t