hild, you are too romantic. You are almost absurd, my sweet
Catherine--forgive your poor mother for saying so."

"No, that I won't," kissing her with that playful tenderness which so
well became her, "that I won't, naughty mamma. Because, do you know, you
say the most unjust thing in the world when you call me romantic. Why,
only ask papa, ask Edgar, ask Mrs. Danvers, ask any body, if I am not
common-sense personified."

"If I asked your papa, my dear girl, he would only say you had a way of
persuading one into any thing, even into believing you had more head
than heart, my own darling," said the fond mother, her pale cheek
glowing, and those soft eyes swimming in delight, as she looked upon her
daughter.

"That's right; and now you have acknowledged so much, my blessed mother,
I am going to sit down by you, and seriously to give you my well weighed
opinions upon this most weighty matter." So Catherine drew a low stool,
and sat too down by her mother's knee, and threw her arm over her lap,
and looked up in her face and began her discourse.

"First of all, then, dearest mamma, I think you a little take up anxiety
at interest in this case. I really never did see a man that seemed to me
less likely to fall in love imprudently than this Mr. St. Leger. He is
so extremely grave and sedate, so serious, and so melancholy, and he
seems so completely to have done with this world--it has, indeed, proved
a bitter world to him--and to have so entirely placed his thoughts upon
another, that I think the probability very remote indeed, if to the
shadow of any thing above a possibility it amounts, of his ever taking
sufficient interest in present things to turn his thoughts upon his own
happiness. He seems absorbed in the performance of the duties to which
he has devoted himself. Secondly, this being my idea of the state of the
case, I have not the slightest apprehension in the world for dear
Lettice's happiness; because I know what a sensible, kind, and what a
well regulated heart hers is, and that she is far too good and
right-minded to attach herself in any way beyond mere benevolence, and
friendship, and so forth, where there was not a prospect of an adequate
return."

"Oh, yes! my love, very true; yet, Catherine, you admit the possibility,
however remote, of what I fear. And then what _would_ become of us all?
Surely, it is not right to shut our eyes to this possibility."

"Why, mamma, I don't deny the possibility you speak o