ed her?"

"Offended a fiddlestick! Offence indeed! An offer from an honest man,
with her friends' approval, and a fortune at her back, as though she
had been born with a gold spoon in her mouth! And she tells me that
she can't, and won't, and wouldn't, and shouldn't, as though I were
asking her to walk the streets. I declare I don't know what has come
to the young women;--or what it is they want. One would have thought
that butter wouldn't melt in her mouth."

"But what is the reason, Miss Stanbury?"

"Oh, reason! You don't suppose people give reasons in these days.
What reason have they when they dress themselves up with bandboxes on
their sconces? Just simply the old reason--'I do not like thee, Dr.
Fell;--why I cannot tell.'"

"May I not see her myself, Miss Stanbury?"

"I can't make her come down-stairs to you. I've been at her the whole
morning, Mr. Gibson. Ever since daylight, pretty nearly. She came
into my room before I was up, and told me she had made up her mind.
I've coaxed, and scolded, and threatened, and cried;--but if she'd
been a milestone it couldn't have been of less use. I told her she
might go back to Nuncombe, and she just went off to pack up."

"But she's not to go?"

"How can I say what such a young woman will do? I'm never allowed a
way of my own for a moment. There's Brooke Burgess been scolding me
at that rate I didn't know whether I stood on my head or my heels.
And I don't know now."

Then there was a pause, while Mr. Gibson was endeavouring to decide
what would now be his best course of action. "Don't you think she'll
ever come round, Miss Stanbury?"

"I don't think she'll ever come any way that anybody wants her to
come, Mr. Gibson."

"I didn't think she was at all like that," said Mr. Gibson, almost in
tears.

"No,--nor anybody else. I've been seeing it come all the same. It's
just the Stanbury perversity. If I'd wanted to keep her by herself,
to take care of me, and had set my back up at her if she spoke to
a man, and made her understand that she wasn't to think of getting
married, she'd have been making eyes at every man that came into the
house. It's just what one gets for going out of one's way. I did
think she'd be so happy, Mr. Gibson, living here as your wife. She
and I between us could have managed for you so nicely."

Mr. Gibson was silent for a minute or two, during which he walked up
and down the room,--contemplating, no doubt, the picture of married
life which