tle letters on very thin paper that had come to her from
"distant lands," and confessed to anxious thoughts as to the claims
which the "foreign field" and the "dark places of the earth" might have
upon her, yet listening to her, and meeting Aunt Martha's admiring
glances, and hearing her more extended accounts of her self-devotion and
self-denial, he could not but consider himself fortunate in his
relations to them both, and desire almost as earnestly as Aunt Martha
did that the young girl should consent to share his life's work and make
it hers. To this end all their intercourse tended, and the course of
love, in their case, promised to be as smooth as could be desired for a
time.

But an interruption occurred as the end of Mr Maxwell's visit drew
near, which, however, seemed hardly to be an interruption as they took
it, or rather, it should be said, as the young lady whom it was
specially designed to influence seemed to take it.

Up to this time Miss Martha had been permitted to do very much as she
chose with her pretty niece. Miss Essie's mother, a dear friend of Miss
Martha's, had died when her daughter was an infant, and the child's
home, even after the second marriage of her father, had been almost as
often with her aunt as with him. Her aunt had chosen her teachers and
her schools, and had introduced her to a social circle far more refined
and intellectual than she could have found in the large manufacturing
town where her father lived. She had formed the girl's mind, and
possessed her affections, and had come to look upon her as her own child
rather than as the child of her hitherto somewhat indifferent father,
who had another family growing up around him. It certainly never came
into Miss Martha's mind that the future she had been planning for her
darling might be regarded by the father with unfavourable eyes. So that
his decided refusal to permit his daughter to enter into an engagement
of marriage with the young man was a surprise as well as a pain to her.

The father was not unreasonable in his objections. Mr Maxwell might be
all that his partial old friend declared him to be, worthy in all
respects of his daughter. But that a child--he called her a child--
should ignorantly make a blind promise that must affect her whole future
life, he would not allow. A girl just out of school, who had seen
nothing of the world, who could not possibly know her own mind on any
matter of importance, must not be s