There was something numbing in the very note of prolonged interrogation.  The folds of Mrs. Guinness’s glossy alpaca lay calmly over her plump breast; her colorless hair (both her own and the switch) rolled and rose high above her head; her round cheeks were unchanging pink, her light eyes steady; the surprised lift of those flaxen eyelashes had made many a man ashamed of his emotions and his slipshod grammar together.

Mr. Muller was humbled, he did not know why.  “It is practical enough, I suppose,” he said irritably, “to ask what Catharine herself thinks of marriage with me?”

“You never tried to discover for yourself?” with an attempt at roguish shrewdness.

“No, upon my honor, no!” The little man fairly lost his breath in his haste.  “I have a diffidence in speaking to her.”

“To Kitty!” with an amused, indulgent smile, which worsted him again.

He struggled back into the hardest common sense:  “Of course it is not diffidence in me.  I feel no hesitation in discussing the question of marriage with anybody else.  My family wish me to marry:  my sister has suggested several young ladies to me in well-to-do religious families in the city.  There are marriageable young women here, too, whose acquaintance I have made with that object in view.  Very intelligent girls:  they have given me some really original views on religion and politics.  One can talk to them about anything—­social evils or what not.  But Catharine—­she is so young!  It is like broaching marriage to a baby!”

Mrs. Guinness was silent.  The sudden silence struck like a dead wall before the little man, and bewildered and alarmed him:  “Perhaps, Mrs. Guinness, you think I ought not to look upon Catharine as another man would?  I should regard a wife only as a fellow-servant of the Lord?  I oughtn’t to—­to make love to Kitty, in short?”

“She is a dear, pious child.  I love to think of her in the midst of your Reformed boys,” said the lady evasively.

There was another pause.  “Of course, you know,” he said with an anxious laugh, “I never had a serious thought of those young ladies chosen by my sister.  Social position or wealth does not weigh with me, Mrs. Guinness—­not a feather!” earnestly.  If he really had meant to give her a passing reminder that marriage with Kitty would be a step down the social grade for him, he was thoroughly scared out of his intention.  As he talked, reiterating the same thing again and again, the heat rose into his neatly-shaved face and little aquiline nose.

Mrs. Guinness observed his agitation with calm triumph.  She knew but one ladder into heaven, and that, short and narrow, was through her own Church.  Kitty was stepping up on a high rung of it.  Once the wife of this good Christian man, and her soul was safe.  A sudden vision of her flitted before her mother in grave but rich attire (fawn-colored velvet, for instance, for next winter, trimmed with brown fur), to suit her place as the wife of the wealthy Muller, head of the congregation and the Reformatory school:  she would be instant, too, at prayer—­meetings and Dorcas societies.  This was Mrs. Guinness’s world, and she reasoned according to the laws of it.  She rejoiced as Hannah did when she had safely placed her child within the temple of the Lord.