affections that they should never damage the good
cause by leaving it. They might marry within the pale,--or remain
single, as might be their lot. She would not take upon herself to
say that Emily Wharton was bound to accept Arthur Fletcher, merely
because such a marriage was fitting,--although she did think that
there was much perverseness in the girl, who might have taught
herself, had she not been stubborn, to comply with the wishes of the
families. But to love one below herself, a man without a father, a
foreigner, a black Portuguese nameless Jew, merely because he had a
bright eye, and a hook nose, and a glib tongue,--that a girl from the
Whartons should do this--! It was so unnatural to Mrs. Fletcher that
it would be hardly possible to her to be civil to the girl after she
had heard that her mind and taste were so astray. All this Sir Alured
knew and the barrister knew it,--and they feared her indignation the
more because they sympathised with the old lady's feelings.

"Emily Wharton doesn't seem to me to be a bit more gracious than she
used to be," Mrs. Fletcher said to Lady Wharton that night. The two
old ladies were sitting together upstairs, and Mrs. John Fletcher was
with them. In such conferences Mrs. Fletcher always domineered,--to
the perfect contentment of old Lady Wharton, but not equally so to
that of her daughter-in-law.

"I'm afraid she is not very happy," said Lady Wharton.

"She has everything that ought to make a girl happy, and I don't
know what it is she wants. It makes me quite angry to see her so
discontented. She doesn't say a word, but sits there as glum as
death. If I were Arthur I would leave her for six months, and never
speak to her during the time."

"I suppose, mother," said the younger Mrs. Fletcher,--who called her
husband's mother, mother, and her own mother, mamma,--"a girl needn't
marry a man unless she likes him."

"But she should try to like him if it is suitable in other respects.
I don't mean to take any trouble about it. Arthur needn't beg for any
favour. Only I wouldn't have come here if I had thought that she had
intended to sit silent like that always."

"It makes her unhappy, I suppose," said Lady Wharton, "because she
can't do what we all want."

"Fall, lall! She'd have wanted it herself if nobody else had wished
it. I'm surprised that Arthur should be so much taken with her."

"You'd better say nothing more about it, mother."

"I don't mean to say anything mo