The mother did not know—­unless—­and a strange light gleamed in her eyes, as she asked if it were some girl.

“Yea, mother, it was,” and without any reservation Wilford frankly told the story of his interest in Katy Lennox.

He admitted that she was poor and unaccustomed to society, but he loved her more than words could express.

“Not as I loved Genevra,” he said, as he saw his mother about to speak, and there came a look of intense pain into his fine eyes as he continued:  “That was the passion of a boy of nineteen, simulated by secrecy, but this is different—­this is the love of a mature man of thirty, who feels that he is capable of judging for himself.”

In Wilford’s voice there was a tone warning the mother that opposition would only feed the flame, and so she offered none directly, but heard him patiently to the end, and then quietly questioned him of Katy and her family, especially the last.  What did he know of it?  Was it one to detract from the Cameron line kept untarnished so long?  Were the relatives such as he never need blush to own, even if they came there into their drawing-room, as they would come if Katy did?

Wilford thought of Uncle Ephraim as he had seen him upon the platform at Silverton, and could scarcely repress a smile as he pictured to himself his mother’s consternation at beholding that man in her drawing-room, but he did not mention the deacon, though he acknowledged that Katy’s family friends were not exactly the Cameron style.  But Katy was young; Katy could be easily molded, and once away from her old associates, his mother and sisters could make of her what they pleased.

“I understand, then, that if you marry her you do not marry the family,” and in the handsome, matronly face there was an expression from which Katy would have shrunk; could she have seen it and understood its meaning.

“No, I do not marry the family,” Wilford rejoined, emphatically, but the expression of his face was different from his mother’s, for where she thought only of herself, not hesitating to trample on all Katy’s love of home and friends, Wilford remembered Katy, thinking how he would make amends for separating her wholly from her home, as he surely meant to do if he should win her.  “Did I tell you,” he continued, “that her father was a judge?  She must be well connected on that side, though I never heard of a Judge Lennox in any of our courts.”

“It must have been when you were in Europe the first time,” Mrs. Cameron suggested, and as if the mention of Europe reminded him of something else, Wilford rejoined:  “Katy would be kind to Jamie, mother.  In some things she is almost as much a child as he, poor fellow,” and again there came into his eyes a look of pain, while his voice was sadder in its tone, just as it always was when he spoke of little Jamie.  “And now, what shall I do?” he asked, playfully.  “Shall I propose to Katy Lennox, or shall I try to forget her?”