hopeless. She felt certain, although the matter
had not been discussed between them, that whenever Dr Crofts might
choose to come again and ask for her daughter's hand he would not be
refused. Of the two men she probably liked Dr Crofts the best; but
she liked them both, and she could not but remember that the one,
in a worldly point of view, would be a very poor match, whereas the
other would, in all respects, be excellent. She would not, on any
account, say a word to influence her daughter, and knew, moreover,
that no word which she could say would influence her; but she could
not divest herself of some regret that it should be so.

"I know what you would wish, mamma," said Bell.

"I have but one wish, dearest, and that is for your happiness. May
God preserve you from any such fate as Lily's. When I tell you to
write kindly to your cousin, I simply mean that I think him to have
deserved a kind reply by his honesty."

"It shall be as kind as I can make it, mamma; but you know what the
lady says in the play,--how hard it is to take the sting from that
word 'no.'" Then Bell walked out alone for a while, and on her return
got her desk and wrote her letter. It was very firm and decisive.
As for that wit which should pluck the sting "from such a sharp and
waspish word as 'no,'" I fear she had it not. "It will be better
to make him understand that I, also, am in earnest," she said to
herself; and in this frame of mind she wrote her letter. "Pray do not
allow yourself to think that what I have said is unfriendly," she
added, in a postscript. "I know how good you are, and I know the
great value of what I refuse; but in this matter it must be my duty
to tell you the simple truth."

It had been decided between the squire and Mrs Dale that the removal
from the Small House to Guestwick was not to take place till the
first of May. When he had been made to understand that Dr Crofts had
thought it injudicious that Lily should be taken out of their present
house in March, he had used all the eloquence of which he was master
to induce Mrs Dale to consent to abandon her project. He had told her
that he had always considered that house as belonging, of right, to
some other of the family than himself; that it had always been so
inhabited, and that no squire of Allington had for years past taken
rent for it. "There is no favour conferred,--none at all," he had
said; but speaking nevertheless in his usual sharp, ungenial tone.

"Ther