"Some people think so much of it. And then his having been here as a pupil! I was very sorry when he spoke to me."
"All that is past and gone. The danger is that such an engagement would be long."
"Very long."
"You would be afraid of that, Mary?" Mary felt that this was hard upon her, and unfair. Were she to say that the danger of a long engagement did not seem to her to be very terrible, she would at once be giving up everything. She would have declared then that she did love the young man; or, at any rate, that she intended to do so. She would have succumbed at the first hint that such succumbing was possible to her. And yet she had not known that she was very much afraid of a long engagement. She would, she thought, have been much more afraid had a speedy marriage been proposed to her. Upon the whole, she did not know whether it would not be nice to go on knowing that the young man loved her, and to rest secure on her faith in him. She was sure of this,—that the reading of Lord Bracy's letter had in some way made her happy, though she was unwilling at once to express her happiness to her father. She was quite sure that she could make no immediate reply to that question, whether she was afraid of a long engagement. "I must answer Lord Bracy's letter, you know," said the Doctor.
"Yes, papa."
"And what shall I say to him?"
"I don't know, papa."
"And yet you must tell me what to say, my darling."
"Must I, papa?"
"Certainly! Who else can tell me? But I will not answer it to-day. I will put it off till Monday." It was Saturday morning on which the letter was being discussed,—a day of which a considerable portion was generally appropriated to the preparation of a sermon. "In the mean time you had better talk to mamma; and on Monday we will settle what is to be said to Lord Bracy."