h apparent feeling,
of his wish to gratify, at the earliest possible period, the last wish
of his son, in the union now arranged--he spoke, with such seeming
consideration and good sense, of the avoidance of all scandal and
misinterpretation in the suit itself, which suit a previous marriage
between the claimant and his daughter would show at once to be of so
amicable a nature,--that Philip, ardently in love as he was, could not
but assent to any hastening of his expected happiness compatible with
decorum. As to any previous publicity by way of newspaper comment, he
agreed with Mr. Beaufort in deprecating it. But then came the question,
What name was he to bear in the interval?

"As to that," said Philip, somewhat proudly, "when, after my mother's
suit in her own behalf, I persuaded her not to bear the name of
Beaufort, though her due--and for my own part, I prized her own modest
name, which under such dark appearances was in reality spotless--as much
as the loftier one which you bear and my father bore;--so I shall not
resume the name the law denies me till the law restores it to me. Law
alone can efface the wrong which law has done me."

Mr. Beaufort was pleased with this reasoning (erroneous though it was),
and he now hoped that all would be safely arranged.

That a girl so situated as Camilla, and of a character not energetic
or profound, but submissive, dutiful, and timid, should yield to the
arguments of her father, the desire of her dying brother--that she
should not dare to refuse to become the instrument of peace to a divided
family, the saving sacrifice to her father's endangered fortunes--that,
in fine, when, nearly a month after Arthur's death, her father, leading
her into the room, where Philip waited her footstep with a beating
heart, placed her hand in his--and Philip falling on his knees said,
"May I hope to retain this hand for life?"--she should falter out such
words as he might construe into not reluctant acquiescence; that all
this should happen is so natural that the reader is already prepared
for it. But still she thought with bitter and remorseful feelings of him
thus deliberately and faithlessly renounced. She felt how deeply he had
loved her--she knew how fearful would be his grief. She looked sad and
thoughtful; but her brother's death was sufficient in Philip's eyes to
account for that. The praises and gratitude of her father, to whom she
suddenly seemed to become an object of even greater p