s."

"What can he have to say so much?"

"There's a good deal of it is about his own private affairs."

"I suppose, then, I mustn't see it."

"Oh yes, mamma!" And Rachel handed her the letter. "I shouldn't think
of having a letter from him and not showing it to you;--not as things
are now." Then Mrs. Ray took the letter and spent quite as much time
in reading it as Rachel had done. "He writes as though he meant to
have everything quite his own way," said Mrs. Ray.

"That's what he does mean. I think he will do that always. He's what
people call imperious; but that isn't bad in a man, is it?"

Mrs. Ray did not quite know whether it was bad in a man or no.
But she mistrusted the letter, not construing it closely so as to
discover what might really be its full meaning, but perceiving that
the young man took, or intended to take, very much into his own
hands; that he demanded that everything should be surrendered to
his will and pleasure, without any guarantee on his part that such
surrendering should be properly acknowledged. Mrs. Ray was disposed
to doubt people and things that were at a distance from her. Some
check could be kept over a lover at Baslehurst; or, if perchance the
lover had removed himself only to Exeter, with which city Mrs. Ray
was personally acquainted, she could have believed in his return. He
would not, in that case, have gone utterly beyond her ken. But she
could put no confidence in a lover up in London. Who could say that
he might not marry some one else to-morrow,--that he might not be
promising to marry half a dozen? It was with her the same sort of
feeling which made her think it possible that Mr. Prong might go
to Australia. She would have liked as a lover for her daughter a
young man fixed in business,--if not at Baslehurst, then at Totnes,
Dartmouth, or Brixham,--under her own eye as it were;--a young man
so fixed that all the world of South Devonshire would know of all
his doings. Such a young man, when he asked a girl to marry him, must
mean what he said. If he did not there would be no escape for him
from the punishment of his neighbours' eyes and tongues. But a young
man up in London,--a young man who had quarrelled with his natural
friends in Baslehurst,--a young man who was confessedly masterful
and impetuous,--a young man who called his own mother a goose,
and all the rest of the world liars, in his first letter to his
lady-love;--was that a young man in whom Mrs. Ray could place