There was no need to nod assent to
her words.

"I've been like a mother to her," wrote Mrs. Nixey, and she rubbed both
the sentences off the slate with her pocket-handkerchief, and sat
pondering over the wording of her next communication. It was difficult
and embarrassing, this mode of intercourse on a subject which even she
felt to be delicate. How much easier it would have been if old Marlowe
could hear and speak like other men! He watched her closely as she wrote
word after word and rubbed them out again, unable to satisfy herself. At
last he stretched out his hand and seized the slate, just as she was
again about to rub out the sentence.

"Our Simon'd marry her to-morrow," was written upon it.

Old Marlowe sat looking at the words without raising his eyes or making
any sign. He had never seen the man yet worthy of being the husband of
his daughter, and Simon Nixey was not much to his mind. Still, he was a
kind-hearted man, and well-to-do for his station; he kept a servant to
wait on his mother, and he would do no less for his wife. Phebe would
not be left desolate if she could make up her mind to marry him. But
with a deep instinctive jealousy, born of his absolute separation from
his kind, he could not bear the thought of sharing her love with any
one. She must continue to be all his own for the little time he had to
live.

"If Phebe likes to marry him when I'm gone, I've no objection," he
wrote, and then, with a feeling of irritation and bitterness, he rubbed
out the words with the palm of his hand and turned his back upon Mrs.
Nixey.

CHAPTER XXII.

A REJECTED SUITOR.

All the next day Phebe remained very near to her father, leaving her
house-work and painting to sit beside him on the low chair he had carved
for her when she was a child. For the first time she noticed how slowly
he caught her meaning when she spoke to him, and how he himself was
forgetting how to express his thoughts on his fingers. The time might
come when he could no longer hold any intercourse with her or she with
him. There was unutterable sadness in this new dread.

"You used to laugh and sing," he said, "but you never do it now: never
since he robbed me. He robbed me of that too. I'm a poor, helpless, deaf
old man; and God never let me hear my child's voice. He used to tell me
it was sweet and pleasant to hear; and your laugh made every one merry
who heard it. But I could see you laugh, and now I never see it."

She cou