"Come, come, my dear!" she protested briskly, "try and put away your grief for a few minutes, and listen to me,—for I'm going to talk to you, for your life-long good."
Nancy raised herself with an effort, and gazed at her adviser with a pair of large, lack-lustre, eyes.
"Nancy, I have come to the conclusion, that you and Captain Mayne can never be happy together. He is not one bit in love—I suppose you realize that. He married you simply to fulfil what he considered a duty,—the payment of an enormous debt! He belongs to a totally different class—County people. I know his uncle—and I know his mother—an odious, overbearing, cat! A super cat! I daresay you are just as well born, but you will find that between you, and his people, a great gulf is fixed. They will forget the true reason for the match, and declare that he has been 'run in.' He has assured me more than once that he had no intention of marrying; and is excessively anxious to get on in his profession. I remember him saying that his sword was is helpmate, and I know from my own experience, that an officer hampered by a wife with no fortune, no helpful connections, is too heavily weighted."
"Then what do you advise me to do?" murmured Nancy, almost inaudibly.
"Remain with me at Clouds Rest, and let him return to Cananore alone. Leave details to me; I can arrange everything,—I shall love doing it! Scarcely a soul knows of the ceremony, and we shall keep it dark. When once you are comfortably established with us, you shall write to Captain Mayne, and tell him that he is absolutely released."
"But will it not be breaking a promise to father?" and Nancy rose out of her chair, and stood before her adviser, a limp, and dejected figure—an almost unrecognizable Nancy!
"No, my dearest child; you know, as well as I do, that your Daddy's sole idea was for your happiness. This scrambled up 'shilling shocker' affair would be for your misery."
Mrs. Ffinch waxed eloquent. She warmed with her subject; excitement, and enthusiasm carried to her feet, and she stalked about the room, declaiming with both hands. On more than one occasion, she had made a marriage; here was a notable opportunity to break one! This idea, to do her justice, was not the sole cause of her energetic intervention. Nancy, more dead than alive, had apparently no interest in her future; and was willing to drift wherever a miserable fate would take her; but Julia Ffinch was not the woman to suffer a favourite puppet to be lost to her in such a fashion! Nancy should have another chance, recover her health, and spirits at Clouds Rest—and let Captain Mayne go his own way.
Mrs. Ffinch had mapped out Nancy's future with a bewildering thoroughness, and continued her exposition, and arguments with unabated zeal. As for Captain Mayne, he would thankfully snatch at such a chance of liberty; for never had she seen a young man so alarmingly altered, and depressed.
"If you and Captain Mayne stick to one another, it will be," she announced, "a deplorable calamity for both,—and his professional ruin. If either of you were in love, of course I would not say a word; but this is really too cold-blooded! Mayne married you to pay the price for his life—you married him—because your father was naturally anxious to see you provided for; there is the whole affair in a nutshell," extending two expressive hands, "and in my opinion, the kernel is rotten!