gle person! If
haply, there had been any man desperate enough to tackle such a woman in
the bonds of marriage, what a pessimist progeny must have proceeded from
you!

Looking back over my Diary for the last two months and more, I see one
monotonous record of the poor fellow's sufferings; cheered and varied,
I am pleased to add, by the devoted services of my daughter at the sick
man's bedside. With some help from her aunt (most readily given when he
was nearest to the point of death), and with needful services performed
in turn by two of our aged women in Cauldkirk, Felicia could not have
nursed him more assiduously if he had been her own brother. Half the
credit of bringing him through it belonged (as the doctor himself
confessed) to the discreet young nurse, always ready through the worst
of the illness, and always cheerful through the long convalescence that
followed. I must also record to the credit of Marmaduke that he was
indeed duly grateful. When I led him into the parlor, and he saw Felicia
waiting by the armchair, smiling and patting the pillows for him,
he took her by the hand, and burst out crying. Weakness, in part, no
doubt--but sincere gratitude at the bottom of it, I am equally sure.

November 29th.--However, there are limits even to sincere gratitude. Of
this truth Mr. Marmaduke seems to be insufficiently aware. Entering the
sitting-room soon after noon today, I found our convalescent guest and
his nurse alone. His head was resting on her shoulder; his arm was round
her waist--and (the truth before everything) Felicia was kissing him.

A man may be of a liberal turn of mind, and may yet consistently object
to freedom when it takes the form of unlicensed embracing and kissing;
the person being his own daughter, and the place his own house. I signed
to my girl to leave us; and I advanced to Mr. Marmaduke, with my opinion
of his conduct just rising in words to my lips--when he staggered me
with amazement by asking for Felicia's hand in marriage.

"You need feel no doubt of my being able to offer to your daughter a
position of comfort and respectability," he said. "I have a settled
income of eight hundred pounds a year."

His raptures over Felicia; his protestations that she was the first
woman he had ever really loved; his profane declaration that he
preferred to die, if I refused to let him be her husband--all these
flourishes, as I may call them, passed in at one of my ears and out at
the other.