se it should be for your true happiness; and I do
believe, for my own part, that, in some respects, she is better fitted
for his daughter-in-law than my poor Mary.'

'No one ever was half as good as Mary!' cried Louis. 'And this is what
you tell me!'

'Mind, I don't tell you to propose to her, nor to commit yourself in
any way: I only tell you to put yourself in a position to form a
reasonable judgment of your own feelings. That is due to her, to
yourself, and to your wife, be she who she may.'

Louis sighed, and presently added, smiling, 'I am not going to rave
about preferences for another; but I do want to know whether anything
can be done for poor Jem Frost.'

'Ha! has he anything of this kind on his mind?'

'He does it in grand style--disconsolate, frantic, and frosty; but he
puzzles me completely by disclosing nothing but that he has no hope,
and thinks me his rival. Can nothing be done?'

'No, Louis,' said Mrs. Ponsonby, decidedly; 'I have no idea that there
is anything in that quarter. What may be on his mind, I cannot tell: I
am sure that he is not on Mary's.'

Louis rose. 'I have tired you,' he said, 'and you are very patient
with my fooleries.'

'You have been very patient with many a lecture of mine, Louis.'

'There are very few who would have thought me worth lecturing.'

'Ah, Louis! if I did not like you so well for what you are, I should
still feel the right to lecture you, when I remember the night I
carried you to your father, and tried to make him believe that you
would be his comfort and blessing. I think you have taught him the
lesson at last!'

'You have done it all,' said Louis, with deep feeling.

'And now, may I say what more I want to see in you? If you could
acquire more resolution, more manliness--will you pardon my saying so?'

'Ah! I have always found myself the identical weak man that all books
give up as a hopeless case,' said Louis, accepting the imputation more
easily than she could have supposed possible.

'No,' she said, vigorously, 'you have not come to your time of life
without openings to evil that you could not have resisted if you had
been really weak.'

'Distaste--and rather a taste for being quizzed,' said Louis.

'Those are not weakness. Your will is indolent, and you take refuge in
fancying that you want strength. Rouse yourself, not to be drifted
about--make a line for yourself.'

'My father will have me walk in no line but his own.'

'You have