, and cry, no surrender?'

'There shall be no surrender,' answered Mary, 'I promise you that. No
doubt grandmother will be very angry. But she has never cared for me
very much. It will not hurt her for me to make a bad match, as it would
have done in Lesbia's case. She has had no day-dreams--no grand ambition
about me!'

'So much the better, my wayside flower! When you have said all that is
sweet and dutiful to her, and have let her know at the same time that
you mean to be my wife, come weal come woe, I will see her, and will
have my say. I will not promise her a grand career for my darling: but I
will pledge myself that nothing of that kind which the world calls
evil--no penury, or shabbiness of surroundings--shall ever touch Mary
Haselden after she is Mary Hammond. I can promise at least so much as
that.'

'It is more than enough,' said Mary. 'I have told you that I would
gladly share poverty with you.'

'Sweet! it is good of you to say as much, but I would not take you at
your word. You don't know what poverty is.'

'Do you think I am a coward, or self-indulgent? You are wrong, Jack. May
I call you Jack, as Maulevrier does?'

'May you?'

The question evoked such a gush of tenderness that he was fain to kneel
beside her chair and kiss the little hand holding the cup, before he
considered he had answered properly.

'You are wrong, Jack. I do know what poverty means. I have studied the
ways of the poor, tried to console them, and help them a little in their
troubles; and I know there is no pain that want of money can bring which
I would not share willingly with you. Do you suppose my happiness is
dependent on a fine house and powdered footmen? I should like to go to
the Red River with you, and wear cotton gowns, and tuck up my sleeves
and clean our cottage.'

'Very pretty sport, dear, for a summer day; but my Mary shall have a
sweeter life, and shall occasionally walk in silk attire.'

That tea-drinking by the fireside in the inn parlour was the most
delicious thing within John Hammond's experience. Mary was a bewitching
compound of earnestness and simplicity, so humble, so confiding, so
perplexed and astounded at her own bliss.

'Confess, now, in the summer, when you were in love with Lesbia, you
thought me a horrid kind of girl,' she said, presently, when they were
standing side by side at the window, waiting for the coach.

'Never, Mary. My crime is to have thought very little about you in those
days