he chimney; and as to the young man
himself, she could not but feel that, had matters been different, she
might have loved him. Now there had come a sudden change; but she did not
at all know how far she might go to meet the change, nor what the change
altogether meant. She had been made sure by her father's question that he
had taught himself to hope. He would not have asked her whether she liked
him,--would not, at any rate, have asked that question in that voice,--had
he not been prepared to be good to her had she answered in the
affirmative. But then this matter did not depend upon her father's
wishes,--or even on her father's judgment. It was necessary that, before
she said another word, she should find out what Lord Bracy said about it.
There she had Lord Bracy's letter in her hand, but her mind was so
disturbed that she hardly knew how to read it aright at the spur of the
moment.

"You understand what he says, Mary?"

"I think so, papa."

"It is a very kind letter."

"Very kind indeed. I should have thought that he would not have liked it
at all."

"He makes no objection of that kind. To tell the truth, Mary, I should
have thought it unreasonable had he done so. A gentleman can do no better
than marry a lady. And though it is much to be a nobleman, it is more to
be a gentleman."

"Some people think so much of it. And then his having been here as a
pupil! I was very sorry when he spoke to me."

"All that is past and gone. The danger is that such an engagement would
be long."

"Very long."

"You would be afraid of that, Mary?" Mary felt that this was hard upon
her, and unfair. Were she to say that the danger of a long engagement did
not seem to her to be very terrible, she would at once be giving up
everything. She would have declared then that she did love the young man;
or, at any rate, that she intended to do so. She would have succumbed at
the first hint that such succumbing was possible to her. And yet she had
not known that she was very much afraid of a long engagement. She would,
she thought, have been much more afraid had a speedy marriage been
proposed to her. Upon the whole, she did not know whether it would not be
nice to go on knowing that the young man loved her, and to rest secure on
her faith in him. She was sure of this,--that the reading of Lord Bracy's
letter had in some way made her happy, though she was unwilling at once to
express her happiness to her father. Sh