of resilience was marvellous.
I have noticed that before. It may, God forgive me, have given me some
slight feeling of contempt for her, because, forsooth, she did not
brood over and nurse an old grief as I did myself. I am not the man to
judge her. When I look back on my own wasted life; when I see how for
one boyish fancy I cut myself off from all the ties of domestic life,
to hold my selfish way alone, I sometimes think that she has shown
herself a better woman than I have a man. Ah! well, old sweetheart, not
much to boast of either of us. Let us get on.

She was walking in the garden, next morning, and Tom came and walked
beside her; and after a little he said,--

"So you are pretty well contented, cousin?"

"I am as well content," she said, "as a poor, desolate, old childless
widow could hope to be. There is no happiness left for me in this life!"

"Who told you that?" said Tom. "Who told you that the next twenty years
of your life might not be happier than any that have gone before?"

"How could that be?" she asked. "What is left for me now, but to go
quietly to my grave?"

"Grave!" said Tom. "Who talks of graves for twenty years to come! Mary,
my darling, I have waited for you so long and faithfully, you will not
disappoint me at last?"

"What do you mean? What can you mean?"

"Mean!" said he; "why, I mean this, cousin: I mean you to be my
wife--to come and live with me as my honoured wife, for the next thirty
years, please God!"

"You are mad!" she said. "Do you know what you say? Do you know who you
are speaking to?"

"To my old sweetheart, Polly Thornton!" he said, with a laugh,--"to no
one else in the world."

"You are wrong," she said; "you may try to forget now, but you will
remember afterwards. I am not Mary Thornton. I am an old broken woman,
whose husband was transported for coining, and hung for murder and
worse!"

"Peace be with him!" said Tom. "I am not asking who your husband was; I
have had twenty years to think about that, and at the end of twenty
years, I say, my dear old sweetheart, you are free at last: will you
marry me?"

"Impossible!" said Mary. "All the country-side knows who I am. Think of
the eternal disgrace that clings to me. Oh, never, never!"

"Then you have no objection to me? eh, cousin?"

"To you, my kind, noble old partner? Ah, I love and honour you above
all men!"

"Then," said Tom, putting his arm round her waist, "to the devil with
all the nonsense you have