From this concession Mr. Carden urged her daily to another, viz., that Mr. Coventry might be permitted to try and win her affection.

Her answer was, “He had much better content himself with what I can and do give him—­my esteem and gratitude and sincere pity.”

Mr. Carden, however, persisted, and the deep affection he had shown his daughter gave him great power.  It was two against one; and the two prevailed.

Mr. Coventry began to spend his whole time at Eastbank Cottage.

He followed Grace about with a devotion to which no female heart could be entirely insensible; and, at last, she got used to him, and rather liked to have him about her.  He broke her solitude as a dog does, and he fetched and carried for her, and talked when she was inclined to listen, and was silent when he saw his voice jarred upon her bereaved heart.

Without her father, matters might have gone on so for years; but Mr. Carden had now so many motives for marrying his daughter to Coventry, that he used all his judgment and all his influence.  He worked on his daughter’s pride, her affection, her sense of honor, and her sense of duty.

She struggled, she sighed, she wept; but, by little and little, she submitted.  And, since three months more passed with no striking event, I will deviate from my usual custom and speak a little of what passed in her mind.

First of all, then, she was so completely deceived by appearances, that she believed the exact opposite of the truth in each particular.  To her not only did black seem white, but white black.  Her dead lover had given her but half his heart.  Her living lover was the soul of honor and true devotion.  It was her duty, though not her pleasure, to try and love him; to marry him would be a good and self-denying action.

And what could she lose by it?  Her own chance of happiness was gone.  All she could hope for hereafter was the gentle satisfaction that arises from making others happy.  She had but a choice of evils:  never to marry at all, or to marry Frederick Coventry.

Thus far she was conscious of her own feelings, and could, perhaps, have put them into words; but here she drifted out of her depth.

Nature implants in women a genuine love of offspring that governs them unconsciously.  It governs the unconscious child; it governs the half-conscious mother who comes home from the toyshop with a waxen child for her girl, and a drum for her boy.

Men desire offspring—–­when they desire it at all—­from vanity alone.  Women desire it from pure love of it.

This instinct had probably its share in withholding Grace from making up her mind never to marry; and so operated negatively, though not positively, in Coventry’s favor.

And so, by degrees and in course of time, after saying “no” a dozen times, she said “yes” once in a moment of utter lassitude, and afterward she cried and wished to withdraw her consent, but they were two to one, and had right on their side, she thought.