t;--but, Janet, it is so hard to do
right."

When the ring at the door was heard, Mrs. Fenwick met Harry
Gilmore in the hall, and told him that he would find Mary in the
drawing-room. She pressed his hand warmly as she looked into his
face, but he spoke no word as he passed on to the room which she had
just left. Mary was standing in the middle of the floor, half-way
between the window and the door, to receive him. When she heard
the door-bell she put her hand to her heart, and there she held it
till he was approaching; but then she dropped it and stood without
support, with her face upraised to meet him. He came up to her very
quickly and took her by the hand. "Mary," he said, "I am not to
believe this message that has been sent to me. I do not believe
it. I will not believe it. I will not accept it. It is out of the
question;--quite out of the question. It shall be withdrawn, and
nothing more shall be said about it."

"That cannot be, Mr. Gilmore."

"What cannot be? I say that it must be. You cannot deny, Mary,
that you are betrothed to me as my wife. Are such betrothals to be
nothing? Are promises to go for nothing because there has been no
ceremony? You might as well come and tell me that you would leave me
even though you were my wife."

"But I am not your wife."

"What does it mean? Have I not been patient with you? Have I been
hard to you, or cruel? Have you heard anything of me that is to my
discredit?" She shook her head, eagerly. "Then what does it mean? Are
you aware that you are proposing to yourself to make an utter wreck
of me--to send me adrift upon the world without a purpose or a hope?
What have I done to deserve such treatment?"

He pleaded his cause very well,--better than she had ever heard him
plead a cause before. He held her still by the hand, not with a grasp
of love, but with a retention which implied his will that she should
not pass away from out of his power. He looked her full in the face,
and she did not quail before his eyes. Nevertheless she would have
given the world to have been elsewhere, and to have been free from
the necessity of answering him. She had been fortifying herself
throughout the morning with self-expressed protests that on no
account would she yield, whether she had been right before or
wrong;--of this she was convinced, that she must be right now to save
herself from a marriage that was so distasteful to her.

"You have deserved nothing but good at my hands," s