that. If I find that people think ill of
him,--because of me--!"

"No one will think ill of him."

"Is it esteemed needful that such a one as he should marry a woman of
his own rank? I can bear to end it all now; but I shall not be able
to bear his humiliation, and my own despair, if I find that I have
injured him. Tell me plainly,--is it a marriage that he should not
make?" Nora paused for a while before she answered, and as she sat
silent the other girl watched her face carefully. Nora on being thus
consulted, was very careful that her tongue should utter nothing that
was not her true opinion as best she knew how to express it. Her
sympathy would have prompted her to give such an answer as would
at once have made Caroline happy in her mind. She would have been
delighted to have been able to declare that these doubts were utterly
groundless, and this hesitation needless. But she conceived that she
owed it as a duty from one woman to another to speak the truth as she
conceived it on so momentous an occasion, and she was not sure but
that Mr. Glascock would be considered by his friends in England to be
doing badly in marrying an American girl. What she did not remember
was this,--that her very hesitation was in fact an answer, and such
an answer as she was most unwilling to give. "I see that it would be
so," said Caroline Spalding.

"No;--not that."

"What then? Will they despise him,--and me?"

"No one who knows you can despise you. No one who sees you can fail
to admire you." Nora, as she said this, thought of her mother, but
told herself at once that in this matter her mother's judgment had
been altogether destroyed by her disappointment. "What I think will
take place will be this. His family, when first they hear of it, will
be sorry."

"Then," said Caroline, "I will put an end to it."

"You can't do that, dear. You are engaged, and you haven't a right.
I am engaged to a man, and all my friends object to it. But I shan't
put an end to it. I don't think I have a right. I shall not do it any
way, however."

"But if it were for his good?"

"It couldn't be for his good. He and I have got to go along together
somehow."

"You wouldn't hurt him," said Caroline.

"I won't if I can help it, but he has got to take me along with him
any how; and Mr. Glascock has got to take you. If I were you, I
shouldn't ask any more questions."

"It isn't the same. You said that you were to be poor, but he is very
rich. And