ful; innocent gay lights danced
in his blue eyes, through lashes and under brows that were a lighter
blond than his beard and hair.

VI.

The next morning, which was of a Saturday, when I did not go to town, he
came over to us again from the shadow of his sombre maples, and fell
simply and naturally into talk about his engagement. He was much fuller
in my wife's presence than he had been with me alone, and told us the
hopes he had of Mrs. Bentley's yielding within a reasonable time. He
seemed to gather encouragement from the sort of perspective he got the
affair into by putting it before us, and finding her dissent to her
daughter's marriage so ridiculous in our eyes after her consent to her
engagement that a woman of her great good sense evidently could not
persist in it.

"There is no personal objection to myself," he said, with a modest
satisfaction. "In fact, I think she really likes me, and only dislikes
my engagement to Edith. But she knows that Edith is incapable of
marrying against her mother's will, or I of wishing her to do so; though
there is nothing else to prevent us."

My wife allowed herself to say, "Isn't it rather cruel of her?"

"Why, no, not altogether; or not so much so as it might be in different
circumstances. I make every allowance for her. In the first place, she
is a great sufferer."

"Yes, I know," my wife relented.

"She suffers terribly from asthma. I don't suppose she has lain down in
bed for ten years. She sleeps in an easy-chair, and she's never quite
free from her trouble; when there's a paroxysm of the disease, her
anguish is frightful. I've never seen it, of course, but I have heard
it; you hear it all through the house. Edith has the constant care of
her. Her mother has to be perpetually moved and shifted in her chair,
and Edith does this for her; she will let no one else come near her;
Edith must look to the ventilation, and burn the pastilles which help
her to breathe. She depends upon her every instant." He had grown very
solemn in voice and face, and he now said, "When I think of what she
endures, it seems to me that it is I who am cruel even to dream of
taking her daughter from her."

"Yes," my wife assented.

"But there is really no present question of that We are very happy as it
is. We can wait, and wait willingly till Mrs. Bentley wishes us to wait
no longer; or--"

He stopped, and we were both aware of something in his mind which he put
from him. He became a l