Mrs. Barker made no reply to this.  In a moment or two her husband went on, in a dogmatical tone.

“It’s the very best match the city affords.  Show me another in any way comparable.  Is not Lorimer worth at least two millions?—­and is not Harman his only son and heir?  Surely you and the girl must both be beside yourselves to think of objecting for a single moment.”

“A good match is not always made so by wealth,” Mrs. Barker returned, in a firm voice, compressing her lips tightly, as she closed the brief sentence.

“You are beside yourself,” said the husband, half sneeringly.

“Perhaps I am,” somewhat meekly replied Mrs. Barker.  Then becoming suddenly excited from the quick glancing of certain thoughts through her mind, she retorted angrily.  Her husband did not hesitate to reply in a like spirit.  Then ensued a war of words, which ended in a positive declaration that Florence should marry Harman Lorimer.  At this the mother burst into tears and left the room.

After that declaration was made, Mrs. Barker knew that further opposition on her part was useless.  Florence was gradually brought over by the force of angry threats, persuasions, and arguments, so as finally to consent to become the wife of a man from whom her heart turned with instinctive aversion.  But every one called it such a good match, and congratulated the father and mother upon the fortunate issue.

What Mrs. Barker suffered before, during, and after the brilliant festivities that accompanied her tenderly-loved daughter’s sacrifice, cannot all be known.  Her own heart’s history for twenty long years came up before her, and every page of that history she read over, with a weeping spirit, as the history of her sweet child for the dreary future.  How many a leaf in her heart had been touched by the frost; had withered, shrunk, and dropped from affection’s stem—­how many a bud had failed to show its promised petals—­how many a blossom had drooped and died ere the tender germ in its bosom could come forth into hardy existence.  Inanimate golden leaves, and buds, and blossoms—­nay, even fruits were a poor substitute for these.  A woman’s heart cannot be satisfied with them.

In her own mind, obduracy and coldness had supervened to the first states of disappointed affection.  But her heart had rebelled through long, long years against the violence to which it had been subjected—­and the calmness, or rather indifference, that at last followed was only like ice upon the surface of a stream—­the water still flowing on beneath.  Death to the mother would have been a willing sacrifice, could it have saved her child from the living death that she had suffered.  But it would not.  The father was a resolute tyrant.  Money was his god, and to that god he offered up even his child in sacrifice.

Need the rambling hints contained in this brief sketch—­this dim outline—­be followed by any enforcing reflections?  An opposite picture, full of light and warmth, might be drawn, but would it tend to bring the truth to clearer perception, where mothers—­true mothers—­mothers in spirit as well as in name—­are those to whom we hold up the first picture?  We think not.