re
there are no obstacles to a union, as in the present case, where the
connection is in every point desirable, delays are unnecessary: they will
be married as soon as S--- Place, which Sir Frederic gives up to them,
can he refitted for their reception."

The first time I found St. John alone after this communication, I felt
tempted to inquire if the event distressed him: but he seemed so little
to need sympathy, that, so far from venturing to offer him more, I
experienced some shame at the recollection of what I had already
hazarded. Besides, I was out of practice in talking to him: his reserve
was again frozen over, and my frankness was congealed beneath it. He had
not kept his promise of treating me like his sisters; he continually made
little chilling differences between us, which did not at all tend to the
development of cordiality: in short, now that I was acknowledged his
kinswoman, and lived under the same roof with him, I felt the distance
between us to be far greater than when he had known me only as the
village schoolmistress. When I remembered how far I had once been
admitted to his confidence, I could hardly comprehend his present
frigidity.

Such being the case, I felt not a little surprised when he raised his
head suddenly from the desk over which he was stooping, and said--

"You see, Jane, the battle is fought and the victory won."

Startled at being thus addressed, I did not immediately reply: after a
moment's hesitation I answered--

"But are you sure you are not in the position of those conquerors whose
triumphs have cost them too dear? Would not such another ruin you?"

"I think not; and if I were, it does not much signify; I shall never be
called upon to contend for such another. The event of the conflict is
decisive: my way is now clear; I thank God for it!" So saying, he
returned to his papers and his silence.

As our mutual happiness (_i.e._, Diana's, Mary's, and mine) settled into
a quieter character, and we resumed our usual habits and regular studies,
St. John stayed more at home: he sat with us in the same room, sometimes
for hours together. While Mary drew, Diana pursued a course of
encyclopaedic reading she had (to my awe and amazement) undertaken, and I
fagged away at German, he pondered a mystic lore of his own: that of some
Eastern tongue, the acquisition of which he thought necessary to his
plans.

Thus engaged, he appeared, sitting in his own recess, quiet and absorbed