-"

"_you_ laughed, Lavinia."

"_you_ laughed, Joseph."

"Get on, for God's sake!" cried Turlington, striking his hand
passionately on the table by which he was sitting. "Don't madden me by
contradicting each other! Did she give way or not?"

Miss Lavinia turned to her brother. "Contradicting each other, Joseph!"
she exclaimed, lifting her hands in blank amazement.

"Contradicting each other!" repeated Sir Joseph, equally astonished on
his side. "My dear Richard, what can you be thinking of? I contradict my
sister! We never disagreed in our lives."

"I contradict my brother! We have never had a cross word between us from
the time when we were children."

Turlington internally cursed his own irritable temper.

"I beg your pardon--both of you," he said. "I didn't know what I was
saying. Make some allowance for me. All my hopes in life are centered in
Natalie; and you have just told me (in her own words, Miss Lavinia) that
she doesn't love. You don't mean any harm, I dare say; but you cut me to
the heart."

This confession, and the look that accompanied it, touched the ready
sympathies of the two old people in the right place. The remainder of
the story dropped between them by common consent. They vied with each
other in saying the comforting words which would allay their dear
Richard's anxiety. How little he knew of young girls. How could he be
so foolish, poor fellow! as to attach any serious importance to what
Natalie had said? As if a young creature in her teens knew the state of
her own heart! Protestations and entreaties were matters of course, in
such cases. Tears even might be confidently expected from a right-minded
girl. It had all ended exactly as Richard would have wished it to end.
Sir Joseph had said, "My child! this is a matter of experience; love
will come when you are married." And Miss Lavinia had added, "Dear
Natalie, if you remembered your poor mother as I remember her, you would
know that your father's experience is to be relied on." In that way they
had put it to her; and she had hung her head and had given--all that
maiden modesty could be expected to give--a silent consent. "The
wedding-day was fixed for the first week in the New Year." ("No, Joseph;
not January--the New Year.") "And God bless you, Richard! and may your
married life be a long and happy one."

So the average ignorance of human nature, and the average belief in
conventional sentiment, complacently contemplated the sacrific