hence."

"He will say the same sixty years hence, if we live as long."

"How old is he now?"

"Thirty-eight."

"When a man wants only two years of his hundredth, he probably has
learned to know his own mind; but then, in most cases, very little mind
is left to him to know."

"Don't be satirical, sir; and don't talk as if you were railing at
marriage, when you have just left as happy a young couple as the sun
ever shone upon; and owing,--for Mrs. Somers has told me all about her
marriage,--owing their happiness to you."

"Their happiness to me! not in the least. I helped them to marry, and in
spite of marriage they helped each other to be happy."

"You are still unmarried yourself?"

"Yes, thank Heaven!"

"And are you happy?"

"No; I can't make myself happy: myself is a discontented brute."

"Then why do you say 'thank Heaven'?"

"Because it is a comfort to think I am not making somebody else
unhappy."

"Do you believe that if you loved a wife who loved you, you should make
her unhappy?"

"I am sure I don't know; but I have not seen a woman whom I could love
as a wife. And we need not push our inquiries further. What has become
of that ill-treated gray cob?"

"He was quite well, thank you, when I last heard of him."

"And the uncle who would have inflicted me upon you, if you had not so
gallantly defended yourself?"

"He is living where he did live, and has married his housekeeper. He
felt a delicate scruple against taking that step till I was married
myself and out of the way."

Here Mrs. Braefield, beginning to speak very hurriedly, as women who
seek to disguise emotion often do, informed Kenelm how unhappy she had
felt for weeks after having found an asylum with her aunt,--how she had
been stung by remorse and oppressed by a sense of humiliation at the
thought of her folly and the odious recollection of Mr. Compton,--how
she had declared to herself that she would never marry any one
now--never! How Mr. Braefield happened to be on a visit in the
neighbourhood, and saw her at church,--how he had sought an introduction
to her,--and how at first she rather disliked him than not; but he was
so good and so kind, and when at last he proposed--and she had frankly
told him all about her girlish flight and infatuation--how generously he
had thanked her for a candour which had placed her as high in his esteem
as she had been before in his love. "And from that moment," said Mrs.
Braefield, passionately,