I am sure you will let me call you so, as had you not felt towards me like a friend, you would not have come to me today and told me of your doubts.  I think that I did not answer you as I ought to have done when you spoke to me.  I did not like to say anything off-hand, and in that way I misled you.  I feel quite sure that you will encounter nothing in England as Mr Glascock’s wife to make you uncomfortable, and that he will have nothing to repent.  Of course Englishmen generally marry Englishwomen; and, perhaps, there may be some people who will think that such a prize should not be lost to their countrywomen.  But that will be all.  Mr Glascock commands such universal respect that his wife will certainly be respected, and I do not suppose that anything will ever come in your way that can possibly make you feel that he is looked down upon.  I hope you will understand what I mean.

As for your changing now, that is quite impossible.  If I were you, I would not say a word about it to any living being; but just go on straight forward in your own way, and take the good the gods provide you, as the poet says to the king in the ode.  And I think the gods have provided for you very well and for him.

I do hope that I may see you sometimes.  I cannot explain to you how very much out of your line “we” shall be, for of course there is a “we.”  People are more separated with us than they are, I suppose, with you.  And my “we” is a very poor man, who works hard at writing in a dingy newspaper office, and we shall live in a garret and have brown sugar in our tea, and eat hashed mutton.  And I shall have nothing a year to buy my clothes with.  Still I mean to do it; and I don’t mean to be long before I do do it.  When a girl has made up her mind to be married, she had better go on with it at once, and take it all afterwards as it may come.  Nevertheless, perhaps, we may see each other somewhere, and I may be able to introduce you to the dearest, honestest, very best, and most affectionate man in the world.  And he is very, very clever.

Yours very affectionately,

Nora Rowley.

‘Thursday morning.’

CHAPTER LXXXI

MR GLASCOCK IS MASTER

Caroline Spalding, when she received Nora’s letter, was not disposed to give much weight to it.  She declared to herself that the girl’s unpremeditated expression of opinion was worth more than her studied words.  But she was not the less grateful or the less loving towards her new friend.  She thought how nice it would be to have Nora at that splendid abode in England of which she had heard so much, but she thought also that in that splendid abode she herself ought never to have part or share.  If it were the case that this were an unfitting match, it was clearly her duty to decide that there should be no marriage.  Nora had been quite right in bidding her speak to Mr Glascock himself, and to Mr Glascock