“It is the quality of the man,” I said, “that determines the quality of the marriage.  She who weds best, weds the truest man.  The rank and wealth are of the last consideration.  To make them first, is the blindest folly of the blindest.”

“Ah, if this were but rightly understood”—­said Mrs. Montgomery—­“what new lives would people begin to live in the world!  How the shadows that dwell among so many households—­even those of the fairest external seeming—­would begin to lift themselves upward and roll away, letting in the sunlight and filling the chambers of discord with heavenly music!  I have sometimes thought, that more than half the misery which curses the world springs from discordant marriages.”

“The estimate is low,” I answered.  “If you had said two-thirds, you would have been, perhaps, nearer the truth.”

Blanche crossed the room, and came and stood by her mother’s chair, looking down into her face with a loving smile.

“I am afraid the journey has been too much for you,” she said, with a shadow of concern in her face.

“You look paler than usual.”

“Paler, because a little fatigued, dear.  But a night’s rest will bring me up even again,” Mrs. Montgomery replied cheerfully.

“How is the pain in your side, now?” asked Blanche, still with a look of concern.

“Easier.  I scarcely notice it now.”

“Blanche is over anxious about my health, dear girl!” said Mrs. Montgomery, as the bride moved to another part of the room.  She thinks me failing rapidly.  And, without doubt, the foundations of this earthly house are giving way; but I trust, that ere it fall into ruin, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens, will be ready for my reception.”

There was no depressing solemnity in her tones, as she thus alluded to that event which comes to all; but a smiling cheerfulness of manner that was contagious.

“You think of death as a Christian,” said I.

“And how else should I think of it?” she replied.  “Can I not trust Him in whom I have believed?  What is it more than passing from a lower to a higher state of life—­from the natural to the spiritual world?  When the hour comes, I will lay me down in peace and sleep.”

She remained silent for some moments, her thoughts apparently indrawn.  The brief, closing sentence was spoken as if she were lapsing into reverie.  I thought the subject hardly in place for a wedding occasion, and was about starting another theme, when she said—­

“Do you not think, Doctor, that this dread of dying, which haunts most people like a fearful spectre—­the good as well as the bad—­is a very foolish thing?  We are taught, from childhood, to look forward to death as the greatest of all calamities; as a change attended by indefinable terrors.  Teachers and preachers ring in our ears the same dread chimes, thrilling the strongest nerves and appalling the stoutest hearts.  Death is pictured to us