“Has she consented to be your wife?”

“I have never asked her.  But I will, if you wish it.”

“Wish it?”

“Why, sir, if you don’t wish it, please forbid it, and let us say no more at all about it.”

“Excuse me,” said Raby, with his grandest air:  “a gentleman may dislike a thing, yet not condescend to forbid it.”

“That is true, sir; and an ex-workman may appreciate his delicacy, and give the thing up at once.  I will die a bachelor.”

“Henry, my boy, give me your hand—­I’ll tell you the truth.  I love her myself.  She is a pattern of all I admire in woman.”

“Uncle, I suspected this, to tell the truth.  Well, if you love her—­marry her.”

“What, without her consent?”

“Oh, she will consent.  Order her to marry you:  she will never disobey the Lord of the Manor.”

“That is what I fear:  and it is base to take advantage of her in that way.”

“You are right, sir,” said Henry, and ran off directly.

He found Jael, and said, “Jael, dear, couldn’t you like Uncle Raby? he loves you dearly.”

He then appealed to her heart, and spoke of his uncle’s nobleness in fearing to obtain an unfair advantage over her.

To his surprise, Jael blushed deeply, and her face softened angelically, and presently a tear ran down it.

“Hallo!” said Henry.  “That is the game, is it?  You stay here.”

He ran back to Mr. Raby, and said:  “I’ve made a discovery.  She loves you, sir.  I’ll take my oath of it.  You go and ask her.”

“I will,” said Raby; and he went to Jael, like a man, and said, “Jael, he has found me out; I love you dearly.  I’m old, but I’m not cold.  Do you think you could be happy as my wife, with all the young fellows admiring you?”

“Sir” said Jael, “I wouldn’t give your little finger for all the young men in Christendom.  Once I thought a little too much of Mr. Henry, but that was over long ago.  And since you saved my life, and cried over me in this very room, you have been in my head and in my heart; but I wouldn’t show it; for I had vowed I never would let any man know my heart till he showed me his.”

In short, this pair were soon afterward seen walking arm in arm, radiant with happiness.

That sight was too much for Henry Little.  The excitement of doing a kind thing, and making two benefactors happy, had borne him up till now; but the reaction came:  the contrast of their happiness with his misery was too poignant.  He had not even courage to bid them good-by, but fled back to Hillsborough, in anguish of spirit and deep despair.

When he got home, there was a note from Grace Carden.

“My own dearest Henry,—­I find that you have called, and been denied me; and that Mr. Coventry has been admitted into the house.