rose the determined force
of duty; and she handed the letter in silence to her mother.

Mrs. Scudder took it, laid it deliberately in her lap, and then began
searching in the pocket of her chintz petticoat for her spectacles.
These being found, she wiped them, accurately adjusted them, opened the
letter and spread it on her lap, brushing out its folds and
straightening it, that she might read with the greater ease. After this
she read it carefully and deliberately; and all this while there was
such a stillness, that the sound of the tall varnished clock in the
best room could be heard through the half-opened door.

After reading it with the most tiresome, torturing slowness, she rose,
and laying it on the table under Mary's eye, and pressing down her
finger on two lines in the letter, said, "Mary, have you told James
that you loved him?"

"Yes, mother, always. I always loved him, and he always knew it."

"But, Mary, this that he speaks of is something different. What has
passed between"--

"Why, mother, he was saying that we who were Christians drew to
ourselves and did not care for the salvation of our friends; and then I
told him how I had always prayed for him, and how I should be willing
even to give up my hopes in heaven, if he might be saved."

"Child,--what do you mean?"

"I mean, if only one of us two could go to heaven, I had rather it
should be him than me," said Mary.

"Oh, child! child!" said Mrs. Scudder, with a sort of groan,--"has it
gone with you so far as this? Poor child!--after all my care, you _are_
in love with this boy,--your heart is set on him."

"Mother, I am not. I never expect to see him much,--never expect to
marry him or anybody else;--only he seems to me to have so much more
life and soul and spirit than most people,--I think him so noble and
grand,--that is, that he _could_ be, if he were all he ought to
be,--that, somehow, I never think of myself in thinking of him, and his
salvation seems worth more than mine;--men can do so much more!--they
can live such splendid lives!--oh, a real noble man is so glorious!"

"And you would like to see him well married, would you not?" said Mrs.
Scudder, sending, with a true woman's aim, this keen arrow into the
midst of the cloud of enthusiasm which enveloped her daughter. "I
think," she added, "that Jane Spencer would make him an excellent
wife."

Mary was astonished at a strange, new pain that shot through her at
these words. She drew