s opportunities, with no
troublesome qualms of conscience whatever. But he had already
perceived, in their brief intercourse, that Rena's emotions, while less
easily stirred, touched a deeper note than his, and dwelt upon it with
greater intensity than if they had been spread over the larger field to
which a more ready sympathy would have supplied so many points of
access;--hers was a deep and silent current flowing between the narrow
walls of a self-contained life, his the spreading river that ran
through a pleasant landscape. Warwick's imagination, however, enabled
him to put himself in touch with her mood and recognize its bearings
upon her conduct. He would have preferred her taking the practical
point of view, to bring her round to which he perceived would be a
matter of diplomacy.

"How long have these weighty thoughts been troubling your small head?"
he asked with assumed lightness.

"Since he asked me last night to name our wedding day."

"My dear child," continued Warwick, "you take too tragic a view of
life. Marriage is a reciprocal arrangement, by which the contracting
parties give love for love, care for keeping, faith for faith. It is a
matter of the future, not of the past. What a poor soul it is that has
not some secret chamber, sacred to itself; where one can file away the
things others have no right to know, as well as things that one himself
would fain forget! We are under no moral obligation to inflict upon
others the history of our past mistakes, our wayward thoughts, our
secret sins, our desperate hopes, or our heartbreaking disappointments.
Still less are we bound to bring out from this secret chamber the dusty
record of our ancestry.

'Let the dead past bury its dead.'

George Tryon loves you for yourself alone; it is not your ancestors
that he seeks to marry."

"But would he marry me if he knew?" she persisted.

Warwick paused for reflection. He would have preferred to argue the
question in a general way, but felt the necessity of satisfying her
scruples, as far as might be. He had liked Tryon from the very
beginning of their acquaintance. In all their intercourse, which had
been very close for several months, he had been impressed by the young
man's sunny temper, his straightforwardness, his intellectual honesty.
Tryon's deference to Warwick as the elder man had very naturally proved
an attraction. Whether this friendship would have stood the test of
utter frankness abou