t your heart upon this thing, mother?--but I know you have.
And I--I have tried as I could to be just and reasonable; to you and
Penelope, and to Brookes Ormsby. He is nobleness itself: it is a shame to
give him the shadow when he so richly deserves the substance."

She spoke rapidly, almost incoherently; and the mother-love in the woman
who was careful and troubled about the things that perish put the
match-maker to the wall. It was almost terrifying to see Elinor, the
strong-hearted, the self-contained, breaking down like other mothers'
daughters. So it was the mother who held out her arms, and the daughter
ran to go down on her knees at the chair-side, burying her face in the lap
of comforting.

"There, there, Ellie, child; don't cry. It's terrible to hear you sob like
that," she protested, her own voice shaking in sympathy. "I have been
thinking only of you and your future, and fearing weakly that you couldn't
bear the hard things. But we'll bear them together--we three; and I'll
never say another word about Brookes Ormsby and what might have been."

"O mother! you are making it harder than ever, now," was the tearful
rejoinder. "I--there is no reason why I should be so obstinate. I haven't
even the one poor excuse you are making for me down deep in your heart."

"David Kent?" said the mother.

The bowed head nodded a wordless assent.

"I sha'n't say that I haven't suspected him all along, dear. I am afraid I
have. I have nothing against him. But he is a poor man, Elinor; and we are
poor, too. You'd be miserably unhappy."

"If he stays poor, it is I who am to blame,"--this most contritely. "He
had a future before him: the open door was his winning in the railroad
fight, and I closed it against him."

"You?" said the mother, astonished.

"Yes. I told him he couldn't go on in the way he meant to. I made it a
matter of conscience; and he--he has turned back when he might have fought
it out and made a name for himself, and saved us all. And it was such a
hair-splitting thing! All the world would have applauded him if he had
gone on; and there was only one woman in all the world to pry into the
secret places of his soul and stir up the sleeping doubt!"

Now, if all the thrifty, gear-getting "faculty" of the dead and gone
Grimkies had become thin and diluted and inefficient in this Mrs.
Hepzibah, last of the name, the strong wine and iron of the blood of
uprightness had come down to her unstrained.

"Tell me a