“I guess it is,” said his aunt.  Then another paroxysm of pain seized her.  She looked at Robert with a convulsed, speechless face.  He held her hands more tightly, his own face contracting in sympathy, and watched his aunt with a sort of angry helplessness.  But he felt as if he wanted to fight something for the sake of this poor, oppressed, innocent creature; indeed, he felt fairly blasphemous.  But this time the pain passed quickly, and Mrs. Lloyd looked at her nephew with an expression of relief and gentleness which was almost angelic.  When the pain was over she thought again of the Brewsters, and how they would not have forsaken her in her misery, had she belonged to them, any more than they had forsaken the insane aunt.

“They are good folks,” said she, “and that is the main thing.  That is the main thing to consider when you are marrying into a family, Robert.  It is more than riches and position.  The power they’ve got of loving and standing by each other is worth more than anything else.”

“You are right, Aunt Lizzie, I guess there’s no doubt of that,” said Robert.

“And that girl’s beautiful,” said Mrs. Lloyd.  She gazed at the young man with a delicate understanding and sympathy which was almost beyond that of a sweetheart.  Robert felt as if a soft hand of tenderness and blessing were laid on his inmost heart.  He looked at her like a grateful child.

“There isn’t anybody like her, is there, Aunt Lizzie?” he asked.

“No, I don’t think there is, dear boy,” said Mrs. Lloyd.  “I do think she is the sweetest little thing I ever saw in my life.”

Robert brought his aunt’s hand to his lips and kissed it.  It seemed to him for a minute as if the love and sympathy of this martyr were almost more precious than the love of Ellen herself.

He realized when he was in his own room, and the house was quiet, how much he loved his aunt, and how hard her pain and probably inevitable doom were for him to bear.  Then something came to him which he had never felt before—­a great, burning anxiety and tenderness and terror over Ellen, because she was of the weaker half of creation, which is born to the larger share of pain in the world.  He felt that he would almost have given her up, yielded up forever all his delight in her, to spare her; for the pain of knighthood, which is in every true lover, awoke in his heart.

Chapter XLI

Nahum Beals was a laster in Lloyd’s.  Late in the autumn, when Ellen had been in the factory a little over a year, there began to be a subtle condition of discontent and insubordination.  Men gathered in muttering groups, of which Nahum Beals seemed always to be the nucleus.  His high, rampant voice, restrained by no fear of consequences, always served as the key-note to the chorus of rebellion.  Ellen paid little attention to it.  She was earning good wages, and personally she had nothing of which to complain.