ce, it's
all up with you. Do you mean to tell me that you seriously think of this
Canada scheme?"

Everett assented.

"Have you informed Lady Beauchamp of your intention of becoming a
merchant's clerk? I should like to see her face when you tell her; she's
such a shrewd old soul; and when a woman _does_ take to the sharp and
worldly style of thing, it's the very deuse! Expect no indulgence in
that quarter."

"I don't ask it. Rosa, of course, cannot become my wife till I am able
to give her a worthy home. Her mother will not wish to cancel our
engagement in the mean time."

"The deuse she won't! Trust her!" the consolatory brother rejoined.
"Why, it will be her first natural step. The idea of her daughter
betrothed to a merchant's clerk is preposterous on the face of it. You
yourself must see _that_."

"No, I don't," Everett said, smiling.

"Oh, I suppose you intend to make a large fortune in a twelvemonth, and
then return and marry?"

"No,--but in ten years,--less than that, God helping me,--if I live, I
will return and marry Rosa."

"You don't say so? And poor little Rosa is to wait patiently for you all
that time! By Jove! a modest expectation of yours! It's a likely notion
that Miss Beauchamp will remain unmarried for ten years, because you
choose to go to Canada."

"She will never marry, if she does not marry me," Everett said, with
simple gravity. "It is not alone the outward sacrament of marriage that
sanctifies a union. The diviner and more vital consecration that binds
us together, it is too late, now, to seek to undo."

"Oh, hang it! It's of no use talking poetry to _me_. I don't understand
that sort of thing," Captain Gray frankly said. "I'll tell you
what,--it'll never do to take those transcendental ideas with you into
the world. All very well to poetize and maunder about in quiet
Hazlewood; but, by Jove! you'll find it won't do in practical life. Take
my word for it, if you go to Canada, long before the ten years are out,
Rosa Beauchamp will be wooed and won over again. 'Tisn't in nature that
it should be otherwise. In books, very likely, those sort of things
happen often enough,--but not in real life, my dear fellow, I assure
you. When you return, it will be to find her a thriving matron, doing
the honors of one of the neighboring mansions. Make up your mind to
_that_. Foresee your future, before you decide."

Everett smiled, sadly, but trustfully. His brother's arguments neither
persuaded