and.

She raised hers with the fingers catching back before she ceased to
speak and dropped it:--

"Ladies. You are witnesses that there is no concealment, there has been
no reserve, on my part. May Heaven grant me kinder eyes than I have
now. I would not have you change your opinion of him; only that you
should see how I read him. For the rest, I vow to do my duty by him.
Whatever is of worth in me is at his service. I am very tired. I feel I
must yield or break. This is his wish, and I submit."

"And I salute my wife," said Willoughby, making her hand his own, and
warming to his possession as he performed the act.

Mrs. Mountstuart's indecent hurry to be at the Hall before the
departure of Dr. Middleton and his daughter, afflicted him with visions
of the physical contrast which would be sharply perceptible to her this
morning of his Laetitia beside Clara.

But he had the lady with brains! He had: and he was to learn the nature
of that possession in the woman who is our wife.

CHAPTER L

UPON WHICH THE CURTAIN FALLS

"Plain sense upon the marriage question is my demand upon man and
woman, for the stopping of many a tragedy."

These were Dr. Middleton's words in reply to Willoughby's brief
explanation.

He did not say that he had shown it parentally while the tragedy was
threatening, or at least there was danger of a precipitate descent from
the levels of comedy. The parents of hymeneal men and women he was
indisposed to consider as dramatis personae. Nor did he mention certain
sympathetic regrets he entertained in contemplation of the health of
Mr. Dale, for whom, poor gentleman, the proffer of a bottle of the
Patterne Port would be an egregious mockery. He paced about, anxious
for his departure, and seeming better pleased with the society of
Colonel De Craye than with that of any of the others. Colonel De Craye
assiduously courted him, was anecdotal, deferential, charmingly
vivacious, the very man the Rev. Doctor liked for company when plunged
in the bustle of the preliminaries to a journey.

"You would be a cheerful travelling comrade, sir," he remarked, and
spoke of his doom to lead his daughter over the Alps and Alpine lakes
for the Summer months.

Strange to tell, the Alps, for the Summer months, was a settled project
of the colonel's.

And thence Dr. Middleton was to be hauled along to the habitable
quarters of North Italy in high Summer-tide.

That also had been traced for a route on the m