exactly what she had set her heart on for me. She
wouldn't leave him alone to make up his mind whether he really wanted
to see more of me or not. She tried to _force_ him to want me. She did
all she could to bring us together. She left no stone unturned. To me
it was sickening. I don't know whether he saw it or not, but I was so
afraid he might, and be disgusted with us both, that it made me feel
absolutely ill. I could never be at ease with him. It was hateful,
hateful that he should think my mother and I were trying to 'catch'
him, because of his title and money, and his beautiful old house which
every one admired and talked about, and heaps of women wanted.

"After we had known him for awhile, mother hinted and hinted for us to
be invited to stay at his place. It was almost like asking him to marry
me--at least I felt it was. He was obliged to get up a house-party for
us, so that we shouldn't be alone, for he had no mother or aunt or any
one to entertain for him. We and the others were invited for a week,
but the day everybody was going on somewhere else, mother was taken
ill, so she and I had to stay. I was sure she was pretending, though
she wouldn't confess, and I was almost wild with misery and shame, I
loved him so _dreadfully_.

"For days mother kept her room, and when she came down she seemed so
weak, that of course he begged us not to think of going. A fortnight
more passed like that. Then the first rumors of war began; and we were
still with him when war was declared. That same day, out in a garden by
a lake we both loved, he told me he _cared_, and asked if I would marry
him before he went off to fight. If only I could have been sure that he
did really care, and hadn't been drawn on by things mother had said, I
should have been divinely happy. But I wasn't sure. I wasn't at all
sure. And the shame and suffering I felt, and the fear of showing that
I adored the ground he walked on, when perhaps he was only being
chivalrous to me, made me behave like a _beast_. I was just a sullen
lump. I said yes, I would marry him, if he was quite, quite sure he
wanted me to; and then mother came out of the house, and straight to
us, as if she had known exactly what was going on and could hardly wait
to make certain of him.

"He had to go so soon, to rejoin his old regiment, and leave for the
front, that he got a special license, and we were married when we had
been engaged just two days. If he did love me--and looking b