to do it. And when there comes one, without ever being invited, or thought of, or supposed possible——”

It seemed to Hester that the burning blush which she felt go all over her was capable of bursting into flame. It was not the shy shamefacedness with which every girl contemplates this subject on its first introduction, but bitter and scorching shame.

"Invited-thought of; mother!" she cried in a voice of girlish thunder; "is it possible that you could ever think of scheming-match-making—for ME?”

No capitals could represent the fervour of her indignation. She was entirely unconscious of the arrogance of self-opinion that was in all she said. For ME. That a man should be invited into her presence with that thought, that she should be put forward, taken into society in order to be seen with that view. Heaven and Earth! was it possible that a woman should avow such possibilities and yet live?

"When I tell you that I never did it, Hester! though I know it was my duty," Mrs. John cried with tears. Never was woman punished more unjustly. She turned like the proverbial worm at the supreme inappropriateness of this judgment against her, and a sudden impulse of anger sustained the gentle little woman. "I know it was my duty," she cried; "for who is to care for you, to see that you are settled in life, but me? But I was afraid to do it. I was obliged to leave it-to Providence. I just said to myself, it is

no use.

Hester would never be guided by me, I must leave it-to Providence."

It did not appear that Mrs. John had much opinion of Providence in such matters, for she announced this with a voice of despair. Then taking courage a little, she said with insinuating gentleness

"I was just the same when I was a girl. I could not endure to hear about settlements and things. It was all love I thought of-my darling. I was like you -all love."

"Oh, mother!" cried Hester, jumping to her feet. This was more intolerable than the other. Her face flamed anew with the suggestion that it was "all love." "For Heaven's sake don't say any more about it, unless you want to drive me out of my senses," she said.

Mrs. John stopped crying, she was so astonished, and gazed with open mouth and eyes. She had thought this last tender touch would be irresistible, that the child would fall into her arms, and perhaps breathe forth the sweetest secret aspiration of her heart-perhaps own to her that dark eyes and a moustache had been her dream instead of Harry's fairness; or that a melting voice or a genius for poetry were absolute requirements of her hero. With all these fancies she would have so tenderly sympathised. She would have liked to discuss everything, to point out that after all a fair complexion was very

She

nice, and a genius for poetry not profitable. remembered what occupation and delight these same subjects had afforded herself in the interval before John Vernon had proposed to her. She herself had dreamed of a troubadour, a lonely being with a guitar, with long hair and misfortunes; and John Vernon had none of these attractions. She was talked over by her mother and sister and made to see that the Bank and the White House were far better. Hester, perhaps, would have been more difficult, but yet she had felt that, confidence once established, the sweetness of these discussions would have been unspeakable. When she had got over her astonishment, she sank back in a despair which was not unmingled with resentment. Had it come to that, that nothing a mother could say would please a child nowadays-neither the attraction of a great match nor the tenderness of love?

This was how the great question of a young woman's life was first revealed to Hester. It was not, to be sure, the last word. That would come when she was placed face to face with the aspirant for her favour and have to decide, so to speak, upon the future of two lives. But to say "no" to Harry would not have excited and confused her being, like this previous encounter with all the other powers and influences which were concerned-or which were considered to be concerned, in her fate.

CHAPTER XII.

AN INDIGNANT SPECTATOR.

HESTER VERNON had been, during the most important years of her existence, a sort of outlaw from life. She had been unacquainted altogether with its course and natural order, out of all its usual habits, separated from every social way of thinking or discipline of mind. She belonged to a little community which thought a great deal of itself, yet had no foundation for so doing; but, strangely enough, though she saw through the fallacy of its general pretensions, she yet kept its tradition in her own person and held her head above the ordinary world in unconscious imitation of the neighbours whom she knew to have no right to do so. She kept the spirit of the Vernons, though she scorned them, and thought them a miserable collection of ungrateful dependents and genteel beggars, less honourable than the real beggars, who said "thank you" at least. And she had no way of correcting the unfortunate estimate of the world she had formed from this group, except through the means of Catherine Vernon, and the society in her house,

of which, at long intervals, and on a doubtful footing which set all her pride in arms and brought out every resentful faculty, she and her mother formed a part. If the Vernon-Ridgways and Mr. Mildmay Vernon. were bitterly critical of Catherine, missing no opportunity to snarl at the hand that fed them, Catherine, on her part, was so entirely undeceived in respect to them, and treated them with such a cynical indulgence and smiling contempt, as if nothing save ingratitude. and malice were to be expected from humanity, that Hester had found no relief on that side from her painful thoughts. She was so conscious in her own person of meanings more high, and impulses more noble, that the scorn with which she contemplated the people about her was almost inevitable. And when, deeply against her will, and always with an uneasy consciousness that her mother's pleasure in the invitations, and excitement about going, was childish and undignified, Hester found herself in a corner of the Grange drawing-room, her pride, her scornful indignation and high contempt of society, grew and increased. Her poor little mother standing patiently smiling at all who would smile at her, pleased with the little recognition given her as "one of the poor ladies at the Vernonry," and quite content to remain there for hours for the sake of two minutes' banale conversation now and then, to be overlooked at supper, and taken compassion upon by a disengaged curate, or picked up by some man