look at me, and I
see what is in your mind. How can I help it?"

"My dear," said she, "is it anything about John?"

"Yes," said I desperately, "it is about John. You think I want to take
him from you, and I do not, and I never will, and I have told him so. I
am going away to London with my friends the Tyrrells, and I will never
trouble you any more."

I was rather blind by this time, and I was not sure of what part of the
room I was in; but Mrs. Hollingford had come to my side, and she put her
arms round about me and fondled my head on her breast.

"My dear," she said, "and is this the secret that has made the trouble
between us? I never thought that you wanted to take him from me; on the
contrary, I feared that you might be too young to understand his worth.
I dreaded sorrow and suffering for my son, nothing else."

My face was hidden in her motherly embrace. I could not speak for some
moments, and I thought my heart had stopped beating. At last I
whispered:

"Oh, Mrs. Hollingford, I have made a great mistake. Can it be that you
really--"

"Will have you for a daughter?" she asked, smiling. "Gladly, thankfully,
my darling, if it be for your happiness. But you must not decide
hastily; there are great disadvantages which you must consider, and I,
as your guardian and friend, must point them out to you. I must forget
my son's interests in the faithful discharge of my trust. John has a
cloud upon his name."

"Don't, don't!" I said, "if he had a hundred clouds upon his name it
would be all the same to me."

"Then you love him well?" she said tenderly, sighing and smiling at the
same time.

"I think I do," I said; "but that is only a misfortune, for you know I
have refused him."

"Well," she said cheerfully, "perhaps it is for the best. You must go to
London with your friends, and test your feeling by absence and the
society of others. If you remain unattracted by those who are better
placed in the world, I think John will try again, in spite of his pride.
I know I should in his place," she said, lifting up my disturbed face,
and looking in it with a half quizzical fondness.

I answered by throwing my arms round her neck in a long tearful embrace,
and after that we sat long by the fireside talking the matter over. The
consequence was, oddly enough, that I went upstairs to bed feeling so
extremely sober that, before I laid my head upon my pillow, I had begun
to doubt whether I cared for John Hollingford at al