Emily Hotspur must
submit to a lot not uncommon among young women in general, and
wait and wish till she could acknowledge to herself that her heart
was susceptible of another wound. That was the mother's hope at
present,--her hope, when she was positively told by Sir Harry that
George Hotspur was quite out of the question as a husband for the
heiress of Humblethwaite. But this would probably come the sooner if
little or nothing were said of George Hotspur.

The reader need hardly be told that Emily herself regarded the matter
in a very different light. She also had her ideas about the delicacy
and the aroma of a maiden's love. She had confessed her love very
boldly to the man who had asked for it; had made her rich present
with a free hand, and had grudged nothing in the making of it. But
having given it, she understood it to be fixed as the heavens that
she could never give the same gift again. It was herself that she
had given, and there was no retracting the offering. She had thought,
and had then hoped, and had afterwards hoped more faintly, that the
present had been well bestowed;--that in giving it she had disposed
of herself well. Now they told her that it was not so, and that she
could hardly have disposed of herself worse. She would not believe
that; but, let it be as it might, the thing was done. She was his.
He had a right in her which she could not withdraw from him. Was not
this sort of giving acknowledged by all churches in which the words
for "better or for worse" were uttered as part of the marriage vow?
Here there had been as yet no church vow, and therefore her duty
was still due to her father. But the sort of sacrifice,--so often a
sacrifice of the good to the bad,--which the Church not only allowed
but required and sanctified, could be as well conveyed by one promise
as by another. What is a vow but a promise? and by what process are
such vows and promises made fitting between a man and a woman? Is it
not by that compelled rendering up of the heart which men call love?
She had found that he was dearer to her than everything in the world
besides; that to be near him was a luxury to her; that his voice was
music to her; that the flame of his eyes was sunlight; that his touch
was to her, as had never been the touch of any other human being.
She could submit to him, she who never would submit to any one. She
could delight to do his bidding, even though it were to bring him his
slippers. She had confess