“Ah, yes, I have heard young women talk like that before, though perhaps they think differently afterwards.  Of course I have no right to obtrude myself, but when you are comfortably married, what is going to become of Honham I should like to know, and incidentally of me?”

“I don’t know, father, dear,” she answered, her eyes filling with tears; “we must trust to Providence, I suppose.  I know you think me very selfish,” she went on, catching him by the arm, “but, oh, father! there are things that are worse than death to women, or, at least, to some women.  I almost think that I would rather die than marry Edward Cossey, though I should have gone through with it if he had kept his word.”

“No, no,” said her father.  “I can’t wonder at it, and certainly I do not ask you to marry a man whom you dislike.  But still it is hard upon me to have all this trouble at my age, and the old place coming to the hammer too.  It is enough to make a man wish that his worries were over altogether.  However, we must take things as we find them, and we find them pretty rough.  Quaritch said he was coming back this evening, didn’t he?  I suppose there will not be any public engagement at present, will there?  And look here, Ida, I don’t want him to come talking to me about it.  I have got enough things of my own to think of without bothering my head with your love affairs.  Pray let the matter be for the present.  And now I am going out to see that fellow George, who hasn’t been here since he came back from London, and a nice bit of news it will be that I shall have to tell him.”

When her father had gone Ida did a thing she had not done for some time—­she wept a little.  All her fine intentions of self-denial had broken down, and she felt humiliated at the fact.  She had intended to sacrifice herself upon the altar of her duty and to make herself the wedded wife of a man whom she disliked, and now on the first opportunity she had thrown up the contract on a quibble—­a point of law as it were.  Nature had been too strong for her, as it often is for people with deep feelings; she could not do it, no, not to save Honham from the hammer.  When she had promised that she would engage herself to Edward Cossey she had not been in love with Colonel Quaritch; now she was, and the difference between the two states is considerable.  Still the fall humiliated her pride, and what is more she felt that her father was disappointed in her.  Of course she could not expect him at his age to enter into her private feelings, for when looked at through the mist of years sentiment appears more or less foolish.  She knew very well that age often strips men of those finer sympathies and sensibilities which clothe them in youth, much as the winter frost and wind strip the delicate foliage from the trees.  And to such the music of the world is dead.  Love has vanished with the summer dews, and in its place are cutting blasts and snows and sere memories rustling like fallen