tive?"

"That we remain with you."

"No, no. That is out of the question. Mrs. Westmacott herself says that
a woman's first duty is to marry. Marriage, however, should be an equal
partnership, as she points out. I should wish you both to marry, but
still I should like a suggestion from you, Clara, as to what I should
do."

"But there is no hurry, papa. Let us wait. I do not intend to marry
yet."

Doctor Walker looked disappointed. "Well, Clara, if you can suggest
nothing, I suppose that I must take the initiative myself," said he.

"Then what do you propose, papa?" She braced herself as one who sees the
blow which is about to fall.

He looked at her and hesitated. "How like your poor dear mother you are,
Clara!" he cried. "As I looked at you then it was as if she had come
back from the grave." He stooped towards her and kissed her. "There,
run away to your sister, my dear, and do not trouble yourself about me.
Nothing is settled yet, but you will find that all will come right."

Clara went upstairs sad at heart, for she was sure now that what she had
feared was indeed about to come to pass, and that her father was going
to take Mrs. Westmacott to be his wife. In her pure and earnest mind her
mother's memory was enshrined as that of a saint, and the thought that
any one should take her place seemed a terrible desecration. Even worse,
however, did this marriage appear when looked at from the point of view
of her father's future. The widow might fascinate him by her knowledge
of the world, her dash, her strength, her unconventionality--all these
qualities Clara was willing to allow her--but she was convinced that she
would be unendurable as a life companion. She had come to an age when
habits are not lightly to be changed, nor was she a woman who was at
all likely to attempt to change them. How would a sensitive man like
her father stand the constant strain of such a wife, a woman who was
all decision, with no softness, and nothing soothing in her nature? It
passed as a mere eccentricity when they heard of her stout drinking,
her cigarette smoking, her occasional whiffs at a long clay pipe, her
horsewhipping of a drunken servant, and her companionship with the snake
Eliza, whom she was in the habit of bearing about in her pocket. All
this would become unendurable to her father when his first infatuation
was past. For his own sake, then, as well as for her mother's memory,
this match must be prevented. And yet how p