you could in truth love, you
would make the sweetest wife that ever a man possessed."

"Oh, papa, how you talk! No such man will come the way, and there's an
end of it."

"Mr. Barry has come the way,--and, as things go, is deserving of your
regard. My advice to you is to accept him. Now you will have twenty-four
hours to think of that advice, and to think of your own future
condition. How will life go with you if you should be left living in
this house all alone?"

"Why do you speak as though we were to be parted to-morrow?"

"To-morrow or next day," he said very solemnly. "The day will surely
come before long. Mr. Barry may not be all that your fancy has
imagined."

"Decidedly not."

"But he has those good qualities which your reason should appreciate.
Think it over, my darling. And now we will say nothing more about Mr.
Barry till he shall have been here and pleaded his own cause."

Then there was not another word said on the subject between them, and on
the next morning Mr. Grey went away to his chambers as usual.

Though she had strenuously opposed her father through the whole of the
conversation above given, still, as it had gone on, she had resolved to
do as he would her; not indeed, that is, to marry this suitor, but to
turn him over in her mind yet once again, and find out whether it would
be possible that she should do so. She had dismissed him on that former
occasion, and had not since given a thought to him, except as to a
nuisance of which she had so far ridded herself. Now the nuisance had
come again, and she was to endeavor to ascertain how far she could
accustom herself to its perpetual presence without incurring perpetual
misery. But it has to be acknowledged that she did not begin the inquiry
in a fair frame of mind. She declared to herself that she would think
about it all the night and all the morning without a prejudice, so that
she might be able to accept him if she found it possible.

But at the same time there was present to her a high, black stone wall,
at one side of which stood she herself while Mr. Barry was on the other.
That there should be any clambering over that wall by either of them she
felt to be quite impossible, though at the same time she acknowledged
that a miracle might occur by which the wall would be removed,

So she began her thinking, and used all her father's arguments. Mr.
Barry was honest and good, and would not ill-treat her. She knew nothing
about him, but wou