young!"

"I missed nothing," exclaimed Cecil; but she felt that she could
only say so in the past, and her eyes burnt with unshed tears.

"No, my dear, you were still a girl, and your deeper woman's heart
had not grown to perceive that it was not met."

"He chose me," she faintly said.

"His mother needed a daughter. It was proper for him to marry, and
you were the most eligible party. I will answer for it that he
warned you how little he could give."

"He did," cried Cecil. "He did tell me that he could not begin in
freshness and warmth, like a young man; but I thought it only meant
that we were too sensible to care about nonsense, and liked him for
it. He always must have been staid and reserved--he could never
have been different, Camilla. Don't smile in that way! Tell me
what you mean."

"My dear Cecil, I knew Raymond Poynsett a good many years before you
did."

"And--well? Then he had a first love?" said Cecil, in a voice
schooled into quiet. "Was he different then? Was he as desperate
as poor Frank is now?"

"Frank is a very mild copy of him at that age. He overbore every
one, wrung consent from all, and did everything but overcome his
mother's calm hostility and self-assertion."

"Did that stop it? She died of course," said Cecil. "She could not
have left off loving him."

"She did not die, but her family were wearied out by the continual
objections to their overtures, and the supercilious way of treating
them. They thought it a struggle of influence, and that he was too
entirely dominated for a daughter-in-law to be happy with her. So
they broke it off."

"And she--" Cecil looked up with searching eyes.

"She had acutely felt the offence, the weakness, the dutifulness,
whatever you may choose to call it, and in the rebound she married."

"Who is she?" gasped Cecil.

"It is not fair to tell you," was the gentle answer, with a shade of
rebuke. "You need not look for her. She is not in the county."

"I hope I shall never see her!"

"You need not dread doing so if you can only have fair play, and
establish the power that belongs rightly to you. She would have no
chance with you, even if he had forgiven her."

"Has not he?"

"Never!"

"And he used up all his heart?" said Cecil in a low, musing tone.

"All but what his mother absorbed. She was a comparatively young
and brilliant woman, and she knew her power. It is a great
ascendancy, and only a man's honest blindness co