thanks to his twenty pounds (I was beginning to feel like Cinderella when the clock was striking twelve), and to tell him it should be repaid to him as soon as possible, though I turned sick at the thought of telling mamma, and knew enough of our affairs to understand how very difficult it would be to muster up the money.  The end of our talk came very soon, for almost to my terror he began to talk violent love to me, and to beg me to promise to marry him.  I was so frightened, that I ran away to the others.  But that night I got a letter from him, apologizing for startling me, renewing his offer, his entreaties for a promise of marriage, to be fulfilled at any date I would please to name—­in fact a most urgent love-letter, and in it a reference to my unlucky debt, which was to be a debt no longer, only an advance of the money to be hereafter mine if only—­You can fancy it all, Molly, better than I can remember it to tell it you.’

‘And what did you say?’ asked Molly, breathless.

’I did not answer it at all until another letter came, entreating for a reply.  By that time mamma had come home, and the old daily pressure and plaint of poverty had come on.  Mary Donaldson wrote to me often, singing the praises of Mr. Preston as enthusiastically as if she had been bribed to do it.  I had seen him a very popular man in their set, and I liked him well enough, and felt grateful to him.  So I wrote and gave him my promise to marry him when I was twenty, but it was to be a secret till then.  And I tried to forget I had ever borrowed money of him, but somehow as soon as I felt pledged to him I began to hate him.  I could not endure his eagerness of greeting if ever he found me alone; and mamma began to suspect, I think.  I cannot tell you all the ins and outs, in fact I did not understand them at the time, and I don’t remember clearly how it all happened now.  But I know that Lady Cuxhaven sent mamma some money to be applied to my education as she called it, and mamma seemed very much put out and in very low spirits, and she and I did not get on at all together.  So of course I never ventured to name the hateful twenty pounds to her, but went on trying to think that if I was to marry Mr. Preston, it need never be paid—­very mean and wicked I dare say, but oh, Molly, I’ve been punished for it, for how I abhor that man.’

’But why?  When did you begin to dislike him?  You seem to have taken it very passively all this time.’

’I don’t know.  It was growing upon me before I went to that school at Boulogne.  He made me feel as if I was in his power; and by too often reminding me of my engagement to him, he made me critical of his words and ways.  There was an insolence in his manner to mamma, too.  Ah! you’re thinking that I’m not too respectful a daughter—­and perhaps not; but I could not bear his covert sneers at her faults, and I hated his way of showing what he called his “love” for me.  Then, after I had been a semestre