“Sit down, my dear,” he answered kindly; “I have something to say to you.  It did not seem necessary to say anything about it before, but now you are nearly twenty-one, and that is the time I have always fixed upon.”

“Fixed upon for what, papa?” she said, utterly at a loss.

“For your marriage, my dear.  It is a good age, quite young enough, and yet old enough for a girl to have some idea of her duties.  I wish you to be married in February.  A month after your birthday.”

Mary looked at him in complete bewilderment.  Her very marriage-day fixed, and where was the bridegroom?  She almost laughed, as she thought that she could not even guess at any person who as likely to propose for her—­except one.

“But who is it?” she managed to ask, at last.  “Nobody wants to marry me.”

“Who is it?” Mr. Wynter repeated in surprise.  “George, of course.”

“George!” she stopped a minute to recover breath.

Mr. Wynter remained silent.  He had said all that was needful.  She was going to say, “Papa, you must be joking,” but she looked at his face and could not.  He was too much in earnest—­she perceived that with him the thing was settled—­and therefore done.  She took courage from the despair of the moment; “Papa,” she said deliberately, “I will never marry my cousin George.”

For one moment, his face seemed to change.  Then he got up, as calm and assured as before.

“You are surprised, I see,” he answered.  “I supposed you must have guessed my intentions.  I will speak with you about it again to-morrow.”

So he went out, and left her stunned, but by no means beaten.  And, from that day a struggle began—­if indeed it could be called a struggle, where the one party had not the slightest comprehension of the resistance of the other.  At Christmas, Mary, by this time driven almost frantic, heard of the arrival of Christian at Chester.  They met by Bailey’s contrivance, and Mary came back home pledged to marry her hero.  Delay, however, was necessary.  The marriage could not take place until just before the Indians sailed for Canada, which would be in March, and Mary could obtain delay, only by a kind of compromise.  She made her cousin himself the means of obtaining this, by reminding him that the least he could do for her, was to give her time to reconcile herself to so new an idea.  He, not the least in love, and far from suspecting a rival, asked that the marriage might be put off for three months.  This was all that was needed.  On the night of the 16th March, Mary left home, and travelled under Bailey’s guidance to Liverpool.  There Christian met her.  All had been arranged, and they were married, and started for Ireland.  After a week or two of honeymoon, they went to Queenstown, and there joined the ship, which was carrying the rest of the party to Quebec.

It was during the two or three weeks spent in Ireland, and still more completely during the voyage, that all the fair fabric of the young wife’s delusions fell to pieces.