red to himself
his mother's consternation at beholding that man in her drawing-room,
but he did not mention the deacon, though he acknowledged that Katy's
family friends were not exactly the Cameron style. But Katy was young;
Katy could be easily molded, and once away from her old associates, his
mother and sisters could make of her what they pleased.

"I understand, then, that if you marry her you do not marry the family,"
and in the handsome, matronly face there was an expression from which
Katy would have shrunk; could she have seen it and understood its
meaning.

"No, I do not marry the family," Wilford rejoined, emphatically, but the
expression of his face was different from his mother's, for where she
thought only of herself, not hesitating to trample on all Katy's love of
home and friends, Wilford remembered Katy, thinking how he would make
amends for separating her wholly from her home, as he surely meant to do
if he should win her. "Did I tell you," he continued, "that her father
was a judge? She must be well connected on that side, though I never
heard of a Judge Lennox in any of our courts."

"It must have been when you were in Europe the first time," Mrs. Cameron
suggested, and as if the mention of Europe reminded him of something
else, Wilford rejoined: "Katy would be kind to Jamie, mother. In some
things she is almost as much a child as he, poor fellow," and again
there came into his eyes a look of pain, while his voice was sadder in
its tone, just as it always was when he spoke of little Jamie. "And now,
what shall I do?" he asked, playfully. "Shall I propose to Katy Lennox,
or shall I try to forget her?"

"I should not do either," was Mrs. Cameron's reply for she well knew
that trying to forget her was the surest way of keeping her in mind, and
she dared not confess to him how wholly she was determined that Katy
Lennox should never be her daughter if she could prevent it.

If she could not, then as a lady and a woman of policy, she should make
the most of it, receiving Katy kindly and doing her best to educate her
up to the Cameron ideas of style and manner.

"Let matters take their course for a while," she said, "and see how you
feel after a little. We are going to Newport the first of August, Jamie
and all, and perhaps you may find somebody there infinitely superior to
this Katy Lennox. That's your father's ring. He is earlier than usual
to-night. I would not tell him yet till you are more decide