in the
language.--Don't you think so, Mamma?'

Mrs. Frothingham had just entered.

CHAPTER 11

The inconceivable had come to pass. By a word and a look Harvey had
made real what he was always telling himself could never be more than a
dream, and a dream of unutterable folly. Mrs. Frothingham's unconscious
intervention availed him nothing; he had spoken, and must speak again.
For a man of sensitive honour there could be no trilling in such a
matter as this with a girl in Alma Frothingham's position. And did he
not rejoice that wavering was no longer possible?

This was love; but of what quality? He no longer cared, or dared, to
analyse it. Too late for all that. He had told Alma that he loved her,
and did not repent it; nay, hoped passionately to hear from her lips
the echoed syllable. It was merely the proof of madness. A shake of the
head might cure him; but from that way to sanity all his blood shrank.

He must consider; he must be practical. If he meant to ask Alma to
marry him, and of course he did, an indispensable preliminary was to
make known the crude facts of his worldly position.

Well, he could say, with entire honesty, that he had over nine hundred
pounds a year. This was omitting a disbursement of an annual fifty
pounds, of which he need not speak--the sum he had insisted on paying
Mrs. Abbott that she might be able to maintain Wager's children. With
all the difficulty in the world had he gained his point. Mrs. Abbott
did not wish the children to go into other hands; she made it a matter
of conscience to keep them by her, and to educate them, yet this seemed
barely possible with the combat for a livelihood before her. Mrs.
Abbott yielded, and their clasp of hands cemented a wholesome
friendship--frank, unsuspicious--rarest of relations between man and
woman. But all this there was certainly no need of disclosing.

At midnight he was penning a letter. It must not be long; it must not
strike the lyrical note; yet assuredly it must not read like a
commercial overture. He had great difficulty in writing anything that
seemed tolerable. Yet done it must be, and done it was; and before
going to bed he had dropped his letter into the post. He durst not
leave it for reperusal in the morning light.

Then came torture of expectancy. The whole man aching, sore, with
impatience; reason utterly fled, intellect bemused and baffled; a
healthy, competent citizen of nigh middle age set all at once in the
co