f course they will not meet. She had better know that you have
told me."

"She shall know it."

"And let her know also that anything I can do to make her happy shall
be done. But, Duke, there is but one cure."

"Time, you mean."

"Yes; time; but I did not mean time." Then she smiled as she went
on. "You must not suppose that I am speaking against my own sex if I
say that she will not forget Mr. Tregear till someone else has made
himself agreeable to her. We must wait till she can go out a little
into society. Then she will find out that there are others in the
world besides Mr. Tregear. It so often is the case that a girl's love
means her sympathy for him who has chanced to be nearest to her."

The Duke as he went away thought very much of what Lady Cantrip had
said to him;--particularly of those last words. "Till some one else
has made himself agreeable to her." Was he to send his girl into the
world in order that she might find a lover? There was something in
the idea which was thoroughly distasteful to him. He had not given
his mind much to the matter, but he felt that a woman should be
sought for,--sought for and extracted, cunningly, as it were, from
some hiding-place, and not sent out into a market to be exposed as
for sale. In his own personal history there had been a misfortune,--a
misfortune, the sense of which he could never, at any moment, have
expressed to any ears, the memory of which had been always buried in
his own bosom,--but a misfortune in that no such cunning extraction
on his part had won for him the woman to whose hands had been
confided the strings of his heart. His wife had undergone that
process of extraction before he had seen her, and his marriage with
her had been a matter of sagacious bargaining. He was now told that
his daughter must be sent out among young men in order that she might
become sufficiently fond of some special one to be regardless of
Tregear. There was a feeling that in doing so she must lose something
of the freshness of the bloom of her innocence. How was this transfer
of her love to be effected? Let her go here because she will meet the
heir of this wealthy house who may probably be smitten by her charms;
or there because that other young lordling would make a fit husband
for her. Let us contrive to throw her into the arms of this man, or
put her into the way of that man. Was his girl to be exposed to this?
Surely that method of bargaining to which he had owed his ow