"No; he never said that," muttered she, half reluctantly. "What he said was that if disparity of condition was the only barrier between us,--if he were sure, or if he could even hope, that worldly success could open an avenue to my heart--"

"That he 'd go and be Prime Minister of England next session.

'If doughty deeds My lady please!'

That was his tone, was it? Oh dear! and I fancied the man had something new or original about him. Truth is, dearest, it is in love as in war,--there are nothing but the same old weapons to fight with, and we are lost or won just as our great-great-grandmothers were before us."

"I wish you would be serious, Lucy," said the girl, half rebukefully.

"Don't you know me well enough by this time to perceive that I am never more thoughtful than in what seems my levity? and this on principle, too, for in the difficulties of life Fancy will occasionally suggest a remedy Reason had never hit upon, just as sportsmen will tell you that a wild, untrained spaniel will often flush a bird a more trained dog had never 'marked.' And now, to be most serious, you want to choose between the eligible man who is sure of you, and the most unequal suitor who despairs of his success. Is not that your case?"

May shook her head dissentingly.

"Well, it is sufficiently near the issue for our purpose. Not so? Come, then, I 'll put it differently. You are balancing whether to refuse your fortune to Charles Heathcote or yourself to Alfred Layton; and my advice is, do both."

May grew very pale, and, after an effort to say something, was silent.

"Yes, dearest, between the man who never pledges to pay and him who offers a bad promissory note, there is scant choice, and I 'd say, take neither."

"I know how it will wound my dear old guardian, who loves me like a daughter," began May. But the other broke in,--

"Oh! there are scores of things one can do in life to oblige one's friends, but marriage is not one of them. And then, bethink you, May, how little you have seen of the world; and surely there is a wider choice before you than between a wearied lounger on half-pay and a poor tutor."

"Yes; a poor tutor if you will, but of a name and family the equal of my own," said May, hastily, and with a dash of temper in the words.

"Who says so? Who has told you that?"

"He himself. He told me that though there were some painful circumstances in his family history he would rather not enter upon, that, in point of station, he yielded to none in the rank of untitled gentry. He spoke of his father as a man of the very highest powers."

"Did he tell you what station he occupied at this moment?"

"No. And do you know it?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Morris, gravely.

"Will you not tell me, Lucy?" asked May, eagerly.

"No; there is not any reason that I should. You have just said, 'What is Mr. Layton to me, or I to him?' and in the face of such a confession why should I disparage him?"

"So, then, the confession would disparage him?"

"It might."

"This reserve is not very generous towards me, I must say," said the girl, passionately.

"It is from generosity to you that I maintain it," said the other, coldly.

"But if I were to tell you that the knowledge interests me deeply; that by it I may possibly be guided in a most eventful decision?"

"Oh, if you mean to say, 'Alfred Layton has asked me to marry him, and my reply depends upon what I may learn about his family and their station '--"

"No, no; I have not said that," burst in May.

"Not said, only implied it. Still, if it be what you desire me to entertain, I will have no concealments from you."

"I cannot buy your secret by a false pretence, Loo; there is no such compact as this between Layton and myself. Alfred asked me--"

"Alfred!" said Mrs. Morris, repeating the name after her, and with such a significance as sent all the color to the girl's cheek and forehead,--"Alfred! And what did Alfred ask you?"

"I scarcely know what I am saying," cried May, as she covered her face with her hands.

"Poor child!" cried Mrs. Morris, tenderly, "I can find my way into your heart without your breaking it. Do not cry, dearest. I know as well all that he said as if I had overheard him saying it! The world has just its two kinds of suitors,--the one who offers us marriage in a sort of grand princely fashion, and the other who, beseechingly proclaiming his utter unworthiness, asks us to wait,--to wait for an uncle or a stepmother's death; to wait till he has got this place in the colonies, or that vicarage in Bleakshire; to wait till he has earned fame and honor, and Heaven knows what; till, in fact, he shall have won a wreath of laurel for his brows, and we have attained to a false plait for ours!" She paused a second or two to see if May would speak, but as she continued silent, Mrs. Morris went on: "There are few stock subjects people are more eloquent in condemning than what are called long engagements. There are some dozen of easy platitudes that every one has by heart on this theme; and yet, if the truth were to be told, it is the waiting is the best of it,--the marriage is the mistake! That faint little flickering hope that lighted us on for years and years is extinguished at the church door, and never relighted after; so that, May, my advice to you is, never contract a long engagement until you have made up your mind not to marry at the end of it! My poor, poor child! why are you sobbing so bitterly? Surely I have said nothing to cause you sorrow?"

May turned away without speaking, but her heaving shoulders betrayed how intensely she was weeping.

"May _I_ see him,--may _I_ speak with him, May?" said Mrs. Morris, drawing her arm affectionately around her waist.

"To what end,--with what view?" said the girl, suddenly and almost haughtily.

"Now that you ask me in that tone, May, I scarcely know. I suppose I meant to show him how inconsiderate, how impossible his hopes were; that there was nothing in his station or prospects that could warrant this presumption. I suppose I had something of this sort on my mind, but I own to you now, your haughty glance has completely routed all my wise resolutions."

"Perhaps you speculated on the influence of that peculiar knowledge of his family history you appear to be possessed of?" said May, with some pique.

"Perhaps so," was the dry rejoinder.

"And which you do not mean to confide to _me?_" said the girl, proudly.

"I have not said so. So long as you maintained that Mr. Layton was to you nothing beyond a mere acquaintance, my secret, as you have so grandly called it, might very well rest in my own keeping. If, however, the time were come that he should occupy a very different place in your regard--"

"Instead of saying 'were come,' Loo, just say, 'If the time might come,"

said May, timidly.

"Well, then, 'if the time _might_ come,' I _might_ tell all that I know about him."

"But then it might be too late. I mean, that it might come when it could only grieve, and not guide me."

"Oh, if I thought _that_, you should never know it! Be assured of one thing, May: no one ever less warred against the inevitable than myself.

When I read, 'No passage this way,' I never hesitate about seeking another road."

"And I mean to go mine, and without a guide either!" said May, moving towards the door.

"So I perceived some time back," was the dry reply of Mrs. Morris, as she busied herself with the papers before her.

"Good-night, dear, and forgive my interruption," said May, opening the door.

"Good-night, and delightful dreams to you," said Mrs. Morris, in her own most silvery accents. And May was gone.

The door had not well closed when Mrs. Morris was again, pen in hand, glancing rapidly over what she had written, to catch up the clew. This was quickly accomplished, and she wrote away rapidly. It is not "in our brief" to read that letter; nor would it be "evidence;" enough, then, that we say it was one of those light, sparkling little epistles which are thrown off in close confidence, and in which the writer fearlessly touches any theme that offers. She sketched off the Heathcotes with a few easy graphic touches, giving a very pleasing portraiture of May herself, ending with these words:--