e nursing, and sweet custody and very making of a future
senator,--would not that have been much? And the man himself who
would have been her husband was such a one that any woman might have
trusted herself to him with perfect confidence. Now that he was
gone she almost fancied that she did love him. Then she thought of
Hugh Stanbury, sitting as he had described himself, in a little
dark closet at the office of the "D. R.," in a very old inky
shooting-coat, with a tarnished square-cut cloth cap upon his head,
with a short pipe in his mouth, writing at midnight for the next
morning's impression, this or that article according to the order
of his master, "the tallow-chandler;"--for the editor of the Daily
Record was a gentleman whose father happened to be a grocer in the
City, and Hugh had been accustomed thus to describe the family
trade. And she might certainly have had the peer, and the acres of
garden, and the big house, and the senatorial honours; whereas the
tallow-chandler's journeyman had never been so out-spoken. She told
herself from moment to moment that she had done right; that she would
do the same a dozen times, if a dozen times the experiment could
be repeated; but still, still, there was the remembrance of all
that she had lost. How would her mother look at her, her anxious,
heavily-laden mother, when the story should be told of all that had
been offered to her and all that had been refused?

[Illustration: To have been the mother of a future peer!]

As she was thinking of this Mrs. Trevelyan came into the room. Nora
felt that though she might dread to meet her mother, she could be
bold enough on such an occasion before her sister. Emily had not
done so well with her own affairs, as to enable her to preach with
advantage about marriage.

"He has gone?" said Mrs. Trevelyan, as she opened the door.

"Yes, he has gone."

"Well? Do not pretend, Nora, that you will not tell me."

"There is nothing worth the telling, Emily."

"What do you mean? I am sure he has proposed. He told me in so many
words that it was his intention."

"Whatever has happened, dear, you may be quite sure that I shall
never be Mrs. Glascock."

"Then you have refused him,--because of Hugh Stanbury!"

"I have refused him, Emily, because I did not love him. Pray let that
be enough."

Then she walked out of the room with something of stateliness in her
gait,--as might become a girl who had had it in her power to be the
fu