he best?"

It is not without a pang that any one can be told that she who is of
all the dearest has some other one who to her is the dearest. Such
pain fathers and mothers have to bear; and though, I think, the arrow
is never so blunted but that it leaves something of a wound behind,
there is in most cases, if not a perfect salve, still an ample
consolation. The mother knows that it is good that her child should
love some man better than all the world beside, and that she should
be taken away to become a wife and a mother. And the father, when
that delight of his eyes ceases to assure him that he is her nearest
and dearest, though he abandon the treasure of that nearestness and
dearestness with a soft melancholy, still knows that it is as it
should be. Of course that other "him" is the person she loves the
best in the world. Were it not so how evil a thing it would be that
she should marry him! Were it not so with reference to some "him",
how void would her life be! But now, to the poor Duke the wound had
no salve, no consolation. When he was told that this young Tregear
was the owner of his girl's sweet love, was the treasure of her
heart, he shrank as though arrows with sharp points were pricking him
all over. "I will not hear of such love," he said.

"What am I to say, papa?"

"Say that you will obey me."

Then she sat silent. "Do you not know that he is not fit to be your
husband?"

"No, papa."

"Then you cannot have thought much either of your position or of
mine."

"He is a gentleman, papa."

"So is my private secretary. There is not a clerk in one of our
public offices who does not consider himself to be a gentleman. The
curate of the parish is a gentleman, and the medical man who comes
here from Bradstock. The word is too vague to carry with it any
meaning that ought to be serviceable to you in thinking of such a
matter."

"I do not know any other way of dividing people," said she, showing
thereby that she had altogether made up her mind as to what ought to
be serviceable to her.

"You are not called upon to divide people. That division requires so
much experience that you are bound in this matter to rely upon those
to whom your obedience is due. I cannot but think you must have known
that you were not entitled to give your love to any man without being
assured that the man would be approved of by--by--by me." He was
going to say, "your parents," but was stopped by the remembrance of
his wife's i