said Elisabeth, who was
as yet young enough to be extremely wise.

"Still, it must be lovely to know there is one person in the world to
whom you can tell all your thoughts, and who will understand them, and
be interested in them."

"It must be far lovelier to know that you have the power to tell all
your thoughts to the whole world, and that the world will understand
them and be interested in them," Elisabeth persisted.

"I don't think so. I should like to fall in love with a man who was so
much better than I, that I could lean on him and learn from him in
everything; and I should like to feel that whatever goodness or
cleverness there was in me was all owing to him, and that I was nothing
by myself, but everything with him."

"I shouldn't. I should like to feel that I was so good and clever that I
was helping the man to be better and cleverer even than he was before."

"I should like all my happiness and all my interest to centre in that
one particular man," said Felicia; "and to feel that he was a fairy
prince, and that I was a poor beggar-maid, who possessed nothing but his
love."

"Oh! I shouldn't. I would rather feel that I was a young princess, and
that he was a warrior, worn-out and wounded in the battle of life; but
that my love would comfort and cheer him after all the tiresome wars
that he'd gone through. And as for whether he'd lost or won in the wars,
I shouldn't care a rap, as long as I was sure that he couldn't be happy
without me."

"You and I never think alike about things," said Felicia sadly.

"You old darling! What does it matter, as long as we agree in being fond
of each other?"

At eighteen Elisabeth said farewell to Fox How with many tears, and came
back to live at the Willows with Miss Farringdon. While she had been at
school, Christopher had been first in Germany and then in America,
learning how to make iron, so that they had never met during Elisabeth's
holidays; therefore, when he beheld her transformed from a little girl
into a full-blown young lady, he straightway fell in love with her. He
was, however, sensible enough not to mention the circumstance, even to
Elisabeth herself, as he realized, as well as anybody, that the nephew
of Richard Smallwood would not be considered a fitting mate for a
daughter of the house of Farringdon; but the fact that he did not
mention the circumstance in no way prevented him from dwelling upon it
in his own mind, and deriving much pleasurable pain