"What do you mean?" asked Mr. Dale.
"Mean?" cried his wife. "What should I be apt to mean? You have no sense about such things, Henry."
"Oh," said her husband meekly, "you want them to fall in love?"
"Well, really," she answered, leaning back in her chair, and tapping her foot impatiently, "I do not see how my husband can be so silly. One would think I was a matchmaker, and no one detests anything of that sort as I do,—no one! Fall in love, indeed! I think the expression is positively indelicate, Henry. Of course, if Lois should be well married, I should be grateful; and if it should be Mr. Forsythe, I should only feel I had done my duty in urging Arabella to take a house in Ashurst."
"Oh, you urged her?"
"I wrote her Ashurst was very pleasant," Mrs. Dale acknowledged, "and it was considered healthy. (I understand Arabella!) I knew her son was going abroad later in the summer, but I thought, if he once got here"—
"Ah," responded Mr. Dale.
CHAPTER IV.
John and Helen had not gone at once to Lockhaven; they spent a fortnight in wandering about through the mountains on horseback. The sweet June weather, the crystal freshness of the air, and the melodious stillness of the woods and fields wrapped those first heavenly days of entire possession in a mist of joy. Afterwards, John Ward felt that it had blinded the eyes of his soul, and drifted between him and his highest duty; he had not been able to turn away from the gladness of living in her presence to think of what had been, during all their engagement, an anxiety and grief, and, he had promised himself, should be his earliest thought when she became his wife:—the unsaved condition of her soul.