his justified her to
herself in refusing her consent to the marriage, while the ingratitude
of the young people in not being content with what she had done formed a
grievance of constant avail with a lady of her temperament. From what
Miss Bentley let fall, half seriously, half jokingly, as well as what I
observed, I divined a not unnatural effect of the strained relations
between her and her mother. She concentrated whatever resentment she
felt upon Miss Bentley, insomuch that it seemed as though she might
altogether have withdrawn her opposition if it had been a question
merely of Glendenning's marriage. So far from disliking him, she was
rather fond of him, and she had no apparent objection to him except as
her daughter's husband. It had not always been so; at first she had an
active rancor against him; but this had gradually yielded to his
invincible goodness and sweetness.

"Who could hold out against him?" his betrothed demanded, fondly, when
these facts had been more or less expressed to us; and it was not the
first time that her love had seemed more explicit than his. He smiled
round upon her, pressing the hand she put in his arm; for she asked this
when they stood on our threshold ready to go, and then he glanced at us
with eyes that fell bashfully from ours.

"Oh, of course it will come right in time," said my wife when they were
gone, and I agreed that they need only have patience. We had all talked
ourselves into a cheerful frame concerning the affair; we had seen it in
its amusing aspects, and laughed about it; and that seemed almost in
itself to dispose of Mrs. Bentley's opposition. My wife and I decided
that this could not long continue; that by-and-by she would become tired
of it, and this would happen all the sooner if the lovers submitted
absolutely, and did nothing to remind her of their submission.

XI.

The Conwells came home from Europe the next summer, and we did not go
again to Gormanville. But from time to time we heard of the Bentleys,
and we heard to our great amaze that there was no change in the
situation, as concerned Miss Bentley and Glendenning. I think that later
it would have surprised us if we had learned that there was a change.
Their lives all seemed to have adjusted themselves to the conditions,
and we who were mere spectators came at last to feel nothing abnormal in
them.

Now and then we saw Glendenning, and now and then Miss Bentley came to
call upon Mrs. March, when she