her.
There's what I mean, Tony."

"Why promise him, then,--why accept him?"

"She never did."

"Ah!" exclaimed he, holding up both his hands.

"I know what I say, Tony. It was the doctor answered the letter in which
Mr. M'Gruder proposed for Dolly. He said that he could not, would not,
use any influence over his daughter; but that, from all he had learned
of Mr. M'Gruder's character, he would give his free consent to the
match."

"Well, then, Dolly said--"

"Wait a bit, I am coming to Dolly. She wrote back that she was sorry he
had not first written to herself, and she would frankly have declared
that she did not wish to marry; but now, as he had addressed her
father,--an old man in failing health, anxious above all things about
what was to become of her when he was removed,--the case was a more
difficult one, since to refuse his offer was to place herself in
opposition to her father's will,--a thing that in all her life had never
happened. 'You will see from this,' said she, 'that I could not bring
to you that love and affection which would be your right, were I only
to marry you to spare my father's anxieties. You ought to have more than
this in your wife, and I cannot give you more; therefore do not persist
in this suit, or, at all events, do not press it.'"

"But I remember your writing me word that Dolly was only waiting till I
left M'Gruder's house, or quitted the neighborhood, to name the day she
would be married. How do you explain that?"

"It was her father forced her to write that letter: his health was
failing, and his irritability had increased to that degree that at times
we were almost afraid of his reason, Tony; and I mind well the night
Dolly came over to show me what she had written. She read it in that
chair where you are sitting now, and when she finished she fell on her
knees, and, hiding her face in my lap, she sobbed as if her poor heart
was breaking."

"So, in fact, she was always averse to this match?"

"Always. She never got a letter from abroad that I could n't have told
it by her red eyes and swelled eyelids, poor lassie!"

"I say, 'poor fellow!' mother; for I declare that the man who marries a
woman against her will has the worst of it."

"No, no, Tony; all sorrows fall heaviest on the helpless. When at last
the time came that she could bear no more, she rallied her courage
and told her father that if she were to marry M'Gruder it would be the
misery of her whole life. He too