ants. And the servants themselves, as far as was
possible, avoided the odious word. The thing was to be buried, if not
in oblivion, yet in some speechless grave. And it seemed that her
father was joined in this attempt. When writing to her he usually
made some excuse for writing also to Everett, or, in Everett's
absence, to the baronet,--so that the letter for his daughter might
be enclosed and addressed simply to "Emily".

She understood it all, and though she was moved to continual solitary
tears by this ineffable tenderness, yet she rebelled against them.
They should never cheat her back into happiness by such wiles as
that! It was not fit that she should yield to them. As a woman
utterly disgraced it could not become her again to laugh and be
joyful, to give and take loving embraces, to sit and smile, perhaps
a happy mother, at another man's hearth. For their love she was
grateful. For his love she was more than grateful. How constant must
be his heart, how grand his nature, how more than manly his strength
of character, when he was thus true to her through all the evil she
had done! Love him! Yes;--she would pray for him, worship him, fill
the remainder of her days with thinking of him, hoping for him, and
making his interests her own. Should he ever be married,--and she
would pray that he might,--his wife, if possible, should be her
friend, his children should be her darlings; and he should always be
her hero. But they should not, with all their schemes, cheat her into
disgracing him by marrying him.

At last her father came, and it was he who told her that Arthur
was expected on the day before Christmas. "Why did you not tell me
before, papa, so that I might have asked you to take me away?"

"Because I thought, my dear, that it was better that you should be
constrained to meet him. You would not wish to live all your life in
terror of seeing Arthur Fletcher?"

"Not all my life."

"Take the plunge and it will be over. They have all been very good to
you."

"Too good, papa. I didn't want it."

"They are our oldest friends. There isn't a young man in England I
think so highly of as John Fletcher. When I am gone, where are you to
look for friends?"

"I'm not ungrateful, papa."

"You can't know them all, and yet keep yourself altogether separated
from Arthur. Think what it would be to me never to be able to ask him
to the house. He is the only one of the family that lives in London,
and now it seems that