not unlikely that he will accept when you propose the thing
for the sake of your nephew."

CHAPTER LXXXVI.

"Le coeur se sature d'amour comme d'un sel divin qui le
conserve; de la l'incorruptible adherence de ceux qui se
sont aimes des l'aube de la vie, et la fraicheur des vielles
amours prolonges. Il existe un embaumement d'amour. C'est de
Daphnis et Chloe que sont faits Philemon et Baucis. Cette
vieillesse la, ressemblance du soir avec l'aurore."
--VICTOR HUGO: L'homme qui rit.

Mrs. Garth, hearing Caleb enter the passage about tea-time, opened the
parlor-door and said, "There you are, Caleb. Have you had your
dinner?" (Mr. Garth's meals were much subordinated to "business.")

"Oh yes, a good dinner--cold mutton and I don't know what. Where is
Mary?"

"In the garden with Letty, I think."

"Fred is not come yet?"

"No. Are you going out again without taking tea, Caleb?" said Mrs.
Garth, seeing that her absent-minded husband was putting on again the
hat which he had just taken off.

"No, no; I'm only going to Mary a minute."

Mary was in a grassy corner of the garden, where there was a swing
loftily hung between two pear-trees. She had a pink kerchief tied over
her head, making a little poke to shade her eyes from the level
sunbeams, while she was giving a glorious swing to Letty, who laughed
and screamed wildly.

Seeing her father, Mary left the swing and went to meet him, pushing
back the pink kerchief and smiling afar off at him with the involuntary
smile of loving pleasure.

"I came to look for you, Mary," said Mr. Garth. "Let us walk about a
bit."

Mary knew quite well that her father had something particular to say:
his eyebrows made their pathetic angle, and there was a tender gravity
in his voice: these things had been signs to her when she was Letty's
age. She put her arm within his, and they turned by the row of
nut-trees.

"It will be a sad while before you can be married, Mary," said her
father, not looking at her, but at the end of the stick which he held
in his other hand.

"Not a sad while, father--I mean to be merry," said Mary, laughingly.
"I have been single and merry for four-and-twenty years and more: I
suppose it will not be quite as long again as that." Then, after a
little pause, she said, more gravely, bending her face before her
father's, "If you are contented with Fred?"

Caleb screwed up his mouth and turned his head