forsook ease and pleasure, and spent day and
night in the patient service of friends whom she loved with a greater
love than a daughter's, for it was that of a saint."

CHAPTER XLIII.

THE EXAMINATION.

"Certainly," said Mr. Amory, "I can well understand that a man of a
generous spirit could hardly fail to cherish a deep and lasting
gratitude for one who devoted herself so disinterestedly to a toilsome
attendance upon the last hours of beloved friends, to whose wants he
himself was prevented from ministering; and the warmth with which you
eulogise this girl does you credit, Sullivan. She must be a young person
of great excellence to have fulfilled so well a promise of such remote
date that it would probably have been ignored by a less disinterested
friend.

"I can hardly believe that a young man who has had the ambition to mark
out, and the energy to pursue, such a course on the road to fortune as
you have thus far successfully followed, can have made a serious resolve
to unite himself and his prospects with an insignificant little
playmate, of unacknowledged birth, without beauty or fortune, unless
there is already an engagement, by which he is bound, or he allows
himself to be drawn on to matrimony by the belief that the highest
compliment he can pay (namely, the offer of himself) will alone cancel
the immense obligations under which he labours. May I ask if you are
already shackled by promises?"

"I am not," replied Willie.

"Then listen a moment. My motives are friendly when I beg you not to act
rashly in a matter which will affect the happiness of your own life; and
to hear, with patience, too, if you can, the few words which I have to
say on the subject. You must mistake, my young friend, if you believe
that the happiness of Gerty, as you call her--a very ugly name--can be
insured, any more than your own, by an ill-assorted union, of which you
will both find cause to repent. You have not seen her for six years,
think then of all that has happened in the meantime, and beware of
acting with precipitation. You have all this time been living abroad in
active life, growing in knowledge of the world, and its various phases
of society. In India you witnessed a mode of life wholly different from
that which prevails with us, or in European cities; but the
independence, both of character and manner, which you there acquired
fitted you admirably for the polished sphere of Parisian life, to which
you were so