“Now look you, Mike.  There are one or two trifling business matters to be arranged between the widow and myself before she leaves us.  You shall transact them with her.  I am too busy at the bank at present.  You are my junior partner, but you are a hot-headed fellow, and I can hardly trust you with accounts.  All I ask and bargain for is, that you be cautious and discreet—­mark me, cautious and discreet.  Let me feel satisfied of this, and you shall settle all the matters as you please.  Business, sir, is business.  I must acknowledge, Mike, that such a pair of eyes would have been too much for old Abraham forty years ago; and what a neck and bust!  Come, go to bed, sir, and get up early in the morning.”

* * * * *

CHAPTER V.

MATTERS OF COURSE.

Margaret Mildred had not failed to note the impression which had been made upon the warm and youthful heart of Michael; she was not displeased to note it; and from her couch she rose, the following morning, delighted with her dreams, and benevolently disposed towards mankind in general.  She lingered at her toilet, grew hypercritical in articles of taste, and found defects in beauty without the shadow of a blemish.  Had some wicked sprite but whispered in her ear one thought injurious to the memory of her departed husband, Margaret would have shrunk from its reception, and would have scorned to acknowledge it as her own.  Time, she felt and owned with gratitude, had assuaged her sorrows—­had removed the sting from her calamity, but had not rendered her one jot less sensible to the great claims he held, even now, on her affection.  From the hour of Mildred’s decease up to the present moment, the widow had considered herself strictly bound by the vow which she had proposed to take, and would have taken, but for the dying man’s earnest prohibition.  Her conscience told her that that prohibition, so far from setting her free from the engagement, did but render her more liable to fulfill it.  Her feelings coincided with the judgment of her understanding.  Both pronounced upon her the self-inflicted verdict of eternal widowhood.  How long this sentence would have been respected, had Michael never interfered to argue its repeal, it is impossible to say; as a general remark it may be stated, that nothing is so delusive as the heroic declarations we make in seasons of excitement—­no resolution is in such danger of becoming forfeited as that which Nature never sanctioned and which depends for its existence only upon a state of feeling which every passing hour serves to enfeeble and suppress.