nk that love,--the love of which she had once thought
so much,--did not matter. Of what use was it, and to what had it led?
What had love done for her friend Glencora? What had love done for
her? Had she not loved John Grey, and had she not felt that with all
her love life with him would have been distasteful to her? It would
have been impossible for her to marry a man whom personally she
disliked; but she liked her cousin George,--well enough, as she said
to herself almost indifferently.

Upon the whole it was a grievous task to her in these days,--this
having to do something with her life. Was it not all vain and futile?
As for that girl's dream of the joys of love which she had once
dreamed,--that had gone from her slumbers, never to return. How might
she best make herself useful,--useful in some sort that might gratify
her ambition;--that was now the question which seemed to her to be of
most importance.

Her cousin's letter to her had been very crafty. He had studied the
whole of her character accurately as he wrote it. When he had sat
down to write it he had been indifferent to the result; but he had
written it with that care to attain success which a man uses when he
is anxious not to fail in an attempt. Whether or no he cared to marry
his cousin was a point so little interesting to him that chance might
decide it for him; but when chance had decided that he did wish it,
it was necessary for his honour that he should have that for which he
condescended to ask.

His letter to her had been clever and very crafty. "At any rate he
does me justice," she said to herself, when she read those words
about her money, and the use which he proposed to make of it. "He is
welcome to it all if it will help him in his career, whether he has
it as my friend or as my husband." Then she thought of Kate's promise
of her little mite, and declared to herself that she would not be
less noble than her cousin Kate. And would it not be well that she
should be the means of reconciling George to his grandfather? George
was the representative of the family,--of a family so old that no one
now knew which had first taken the ancient titular name of some old
Saxon landowner,--the parish, or the man. There had been in old days
some worthy Vavaseurs, as Chaucer calls them, whose rank and bearing
had been adopted on the moorland side. Of these things Alice thought
much, and felt that it should be her duty so to act, that future
Vavasors might