ecause I can't have the sort of
chair I like to sit on; and then they don't put any green
tea into the pot, and I don't like to ask to have any
made, as I doubt whether they have any green tea in the
house. And I find it bad to be among invalids with whom,
indeed, I can sympathise, but for whom I cannot pretend
that I feel any great affection. As we grow old we become
incapable of new tenderness, and rather resent the calls
that are made upon us for pity. The luxury of devotion to
misery is as much the privilege of the young as is that of
devotion to love.

Write soon, dearest; and remember that the best news
I can have, will be tidings as to the day fixed for
your marriage. And remember, too, that I won't have any
question about your being married at Bullhampton. It would
be quite improper. He must come to Loring; and I needn't
say how glad I shall be to see the Fenwicks. Parson John
will expect to marry you, but Mr. Fenwick might come and
assist.

Your most affectionate aunt,

SARAH MARRABLE.

It was not the entreaty made by her aunt that an early day should
be fixed for the marriage which made Mary Lowther determine that
she would yet once more attempt to drag the wagon. She could have
withstood such entreaty as that, and, had the letter gone no further,
would probably have replied to it by saying that no day could be
fixed at all. But, with the letter there came an assurance that
Walter Marrable had forgotten her, was about to marry Edith Brownlow,
and that therefore all ideas of love and truth and sympathy and joint
beating of mutual hearts, with the rest of it, might be thrown to the
winds. She would marry Harry Gilmore, and take care that he had good
dinners, and would give her mind to flannel petticoats and coal for
the poor of Bullhampton, and would altogether come down from the
pedestal which she had once striven to erect for herself. From that
high but tottering pedestal, propped up on shafts of romance and
poetry, she would come down; but there would remain for her the
lower, firmer standing block, of which duty was the sole support. It
was no doubt most unreasonable that any such change should come upon
her in consequence of her aunt's letter. She had never for a moment
told herself that Walter Marrable could ever be anything to her,
since that day on which she had by her own deed liberated him from
his troth; and, indeed, had done more t