of those shocks one so often feels when
one hears that a thing he has anticipated without pain, even with
pleasure, is to become actual.

But he replied at once, "My dear! Of course!" without hearing any
particulars; and added: "You will be happier, I am sure. Why should
I refuse my consent to your marrying Fenwick? Because that's it, I
suppose?" That was it. The Major had guessed right.

"He asked me to marry him, last night," she said, with simple
equanimity and directness. "I told him yes, as far as my own wishes
went. But I said I wouldn't, if either you or the kitten forbade the
banns."

"I don't think we shall, either of us." It was a daughter's
marriage-warrant he was being asked to sign; a document seldom signed
without a heartache, more or less, for him who holds the pen. But his
_coeur navre_ had to be concealed, for the sake of the applicant;
no wet blanket should be cast on her new happiness. He kissed her
affectionately. To him, for all her thirty-nine or forty birthdays,
she was still the young girl he had helped and shielded in her despair,
twenty years ago, he himself being then a widower, near forty years her
senior. "No, Rosa dear," continued the Major. "As far as I can see,
there can be no objection but one--_you_ know!"

"_The_ one?"

"Yes. It is all a _terra incognita_. He _may_ have a wife elsewhere,
seeking for him. Who can tell?"

"It is a risk to be run. But I am prepared to run it"--she was going
to add "for his sake," but remembered that her real meaning for these
words would be, "for the sake of the man I wronged," and that the Major
knew nothing of Fenwick's identity. She had not been able to persuade
herself to make even her old friend her confidant. Danger lay that way.
She _knew_ silence would be safe against anything but Fenwick's own
memory.

"Yes, it is a risk, no doubt," the Major said. "But I am like him. I
cannot conceive a man forgetting that he had a wife. It seems an
impossibility. He has talked about you to me, you know."

"In connexion with his intention about me?"

"Almost. Not quite definitely, but almost. He knew I understood what he
meant. It seemed to me he was fidgeting more about his having so little
to offer in the way of worldly goods than about any possible wife in
the clouds."

"Dear fellow! Just fancy! Why, those people in the City would take him
into partnership to-morrow if he had a little capital to bring in. They
told him so themselves."

"And yo