her first glance at Mabel's pretty
walking costume a fondness for dress and extravagance, which branded
her at once as a 'worldling,' between whom and herself there could be
nothing in common--in which last opinion she was most probably right,
as all Mabel's efforts to sustain a conversation could not save it
from frequent lapses. Martha, from shyness as much as stiffness, sat
by in almost complete silence; and though Trixie, the only other
member of the family who appeared, was evidently won at once by
Mabel's appearance, and did all she could to cover the others'
shortcomings, she was not sufficiently at her ease to break the chill;
and Mark, angry and ashamed as he was, felt paralysed himself under
its influence.

On the way back he was unusually silent, from a fear of the impression
such an ordeal as she had gone through must have left upon Mabel; and
the fact that she did not refer to the interview herself did not
reassure him. He need not have been afraid, however; she was not in
the least deterred by what she had seen. The sight of the home in
which he had been brought up had filled her with a loving pity,
suggesting as it did the petty constraints and miseries, the
unloveliness of all surroundings, and the total want of appreciation
which he must have endured there. And yet all this had not soured him;
in spite of it he had produced a great book, strong, yet refined and
tender, and free from any taint of narrowness or cynicism. As she
thought of this and glanced at Mark's handsome face, so bright and
animated in general, but clouded now with the melancholy which his
fine eyes could express at times, she longed to say something to
relieve it, and yet shrank from being the first to speak in her fear
of jarring him.

Mark spoke at last. 'Well, Mabel,' he said, looking down at her with a
rather doubtful smile, 'I told you that my mother was a--a little
peculiar.'

'Yes,' said Mabel frankly; 'we didn't quite get on together, did we,
Mark? We shall some day, perhaps; and even if not--I shall have you!'
And she laid her hand on his sleeve with a look of perfect
understanding and contentment which, little as he deserved it, chased
away all his fears.

CHAPTER XXVII.

CLEAR SKY--AND A THUNDERBOLT.

'Has any one,' asks George Eliot, in 'Middlemarch,' 'ever pinched into
its pilulous smallness the cobweb of pre-matrimonial acquaintance?'
And, to press the metaphor, the cobweb, as far as Mark and Mabel were