pated trouble, for the
simple reason that both believed Wilfrid's affections to tend already in
a marked direction, and one of which they altogether approved. That he
would some day take for his wife Beatrice Redwing was a conclusion upon
which father and aunt had settled their minds; the conclusion was
reasonable enough, and well supported by such evidence as the ease
admitted. Mr. Athel had at an earlier period entertained certain
misgivings as to the desirability of such a marriage; misgivings which
had reference to the disastrous story of the Redwing household; the
conception of hereditary tendencies has become a strong force in our
time, and pronounced madness in a parent cannot as easily be disregarded
as it once was. But the advantages of the alliance were so considerable,
its likelihood so indisputable, that prudence had scarcely fair play;
besides, Beatrice had reached her twenty-first year without any sign of
mental trouble, and seemed as sound a girl as could anywhere be
discovered. The habitual sword-crossing between her and Wilfrid was
naturally regarded as their mode of growing endeared to each other;
their intellectual variances could not, by a sober gentleman of
eight-and-forty and by a young widow whose interest in the world was
reviving, be regarded as a bar to matrimony. 'Family,' Beatrice would
not bring, but she was certain to inherit very large fortune, which,
after all, means more than family nowadays. On the whole it was a
capital thing for Wilfrid that marriage would be entered upon in so
smooth a way. Mr. Athel was not forgetful of his own course in that
matter; he understood his father's attitude as he could not when
resisting it, and was much disposed to concede that there might have
been two opinions as to his own proceeding five-and-twenty years ago.
But for Beatrice, the young man's matrimonial future would have been to
his father a subject of constant apprehension; as it was, the situation
lost much of its natural hazard.

In Emily there was nothing that suggested sentimentality; rather one
would have thought her deficient in sensibility, judging from the tone
of her conversation. She did not freely express admiration, even in the
form of assent to what was said by others. To interpret her reticence as
shyness was a misunderstanding, or a misuse of words, natural in the
case of an inexact observer like Mrs. Rossall. Four years ago, when
Beatrice met her in Dunfield, her want of self-confi