I cannot stand between you and your love, dear--I know
that.'

'But you can make me very unhappy by your doubts, Mary,' she
answered.

I kissed her, and did my best to console her; but she was not easily
to be comforted, and left me in a half-sorrowful, half-angry mood. I
had disappointed her, she told me--she had felt so sure of my
sympathy; and instead of sharing her happiness, I had made her
miserable by my fanciful doubts and gloomy forebodings. After she
had gone, I sat by the window for a long time, thinking of her
disconsolately, and feeling myself very guilty. But I had a fixed
conviction that Mr. Darrell would refuse to receive Angus Egerton as
his daughter's suitor, and that the course of this love-affair was
not destined to be a smooth one.

The result proved that I had been right. Mr. Egerton had a long
interview with Mr. Darrell in the library next morning, during which
his proposal was most firmly rejected. Milly and I knew that he was
in the house, and my poor girl walked up and down our sitting-room
with nervously clasped hands and an ashy pale face all the time
those two were together down-stairs.

She turned to me with a little piteous look when she heard Angus
Egerton ride away from the front of the house.

'O Mary, what is my fate to be?' she asked. 'I think he has been
rejected. I do not think he would have gone away without seeing me
if the interview had ended happily.'

A servant came to summon us both to the library. We went down
together, Milly's cold hand clasped in mine.

Mr. Darrell was not alone. His wife was sitting with her back to the
window, very pale, and with an angry brightness in her eyes.

'Sit down, Miss Crofton,' Mr. Darrell said very coldly; 'and you,
Milly, come here.'

She went towards him with a slow faltering step, and sank down into
the chair to which he pointed, looking at him all the time in an
eager beseeching way that I think must have gone to his heart. He
was standing with his back to the empty fireplace, and remained
standing throughout the interview.

'I think you know that I love you, Milly,' he began, 'and that your
happiness is the chief desire of my mind.'

'I'm sure of that, papa.'

'And yet you have deceived me.'

'Deceived you? O papa, in what way?'

'By encouraging the hopes of a man whom you must have known I would
never receive as your husband; by suffering your feelings to become
engaged, without one word of warning to me, and in a man