least impressed by this hint, "but what
else?"

"He said, 'Joe, you ought to have been above wanting to marry any woman
who was ashamed of you. I wouldn't do such a thing on any account.'"

"He said that?" cried Laura, rather startled.

"Yes, and I quite agreed with him--I told Joe that I did."

"Did he say anything more?"

Brandon hesitated, and at length, finding that she would wait till he
spoke, he said--

"He told Joe he ought to be thankful to have the thing over, and said
that he had come out of it well, and the lady had not."

"Amelia is not half so unkind as you are," said Laura, when she had made
him say this, and a quiet tear stole down her cheek and dropped on her
hand.

"Pardon me! I think that for myself I have expressed no opinion but this
one, that Joe Swan deserves your respect for the manly care he has taken
to shield you from blame, spare you anxiety, and terminate the matter
properly."

"Terminate!" repeated Laura; "yes, that is where you are so unkind."

"Am I expected to help her to bring it on again?" thought Brandon. "No;
I have a great respect for fools, and they must marry like other people;
but oh, Joey, Joey Swan, if you are one, which I thought you the other
day (and the soul of honour too!), I think if you still cared about it,
you could soon get yourself mated with a greater one still! Laura
Melcombe would be at least a fair match for you in that particular. But
no, Joey, I decline to interfere any further."

CHAPTER XIV.

EMILY.

"Not warp'd by passion, awed by rumour,
Not grave through pride, nor gay through folly,
An equal mixture of good humour,
And sensible, soft melancholy.

"'Has she no faults then,' Envy says, 'Sir?'
'Yes, she has one, I must aver;
When all the world conspires to praise her
The woman's deaf, and does not hear.'"

John Mortimer was sitting at breakfast the very morning after this
conversation had taken place at Melcombe. No less than four of his
children were waiting on him; Gladys was drying his limp newspaper at a
bright fire, Barbara spreading butter on his toast, little Hugh kneeling
on a chair, with his elbows on the table, was reading him a choice
anecdote from a child's book of natural history, and Anastasia, while he
poured out his coffee with one hand, had got hold of the other, which
she was folding up industriously in her pinafore and frock, because she
said it was cold. It was a wi