e a difference as to your own
property, Dr. Grantly?"

"Certainly it will, Lady Lufton. I told Henry when I first heard
of the thing,--before he had definitely made any offer to the
girl,--that I should withdraw from him altogether the allowance that
I now make him, if he married her. And I told him also, that if he
persisted in his folly I should think it my duty to alter my will."

"I am sorry for that, Dr. Grantly."

"Sorry! And am I not sorry? Sorrow is no sufficient word. I am
broken-hearted. Lady Lufton, it is killing me. It is indeed. I love
him; I love him;--I love him as you have loved your son. But what is
the use? What can he be to me when he shall have married the daughter
of such a man as that?"

Lady Lufton sat for a while silent, thinking of a certain episode
in her own life. There had been a time when her son was desirous
of making a marriage which she had thought would break her heart.
She had for a time moved heaven and earth,--as far as she knew
how to move them,--to prevent the marriage. But at last she had
yielded,--not from lack of power, for the circumstances had been such
that at the moment of yielding she had still the power in her hand of
staying the marriage,--but she had yielded because she had perceived
that her son was in earnest. She had yielded, and had kissed the
dust; but from the moment in which her lips had so touched the
ground, they had taken great joy in the new daughter whom her son
had brought into the house. Since that she had learned to think
that young people might perhaps be right, and that old people might
perhaps be wrong. This trouble of her friend the archdeacon's was
very like her own trouble. "And he is engaged to her now?" she said,
when those thoughts had passed through her mind.

"Yes;--that is, no. I am not sure. I do not know how to make myself
sure."

"I am sure Major Grantly will tell you all the truth as it exists."

"Yes; he'll tell me the truth,--as far as he knows it. I do not see
that there is much anxiety to spare me in that matter. He is desirous
rather of making me understand that I have no power of saving him
from his own folly. Of course I have no power of saving him."

"But is he engaged to her?"

"He says that she has refused him. But of course that means nothing."

Again the archdeacon's position was very like Lady Lufton's position,
as it had existed before her son's marriage. In that case also the
young lady, who was now Lady Lufton's