She had known that she would have to encounter opposition, though she had not expected to be told that she had disgraced herself.

As she sat there she resolved that under no pretence would she give up her lover;--but she was so far abashed that she could not find words to express herself.

He, too, had been silent for a few moments before he again asked her for her promise.
"Will you tell me, Mary, that you will not see him again ?" "I don't think that I can say that, papa." "Why not ?" "Oh papa, how can I, when of all the people in the world I love him the best ?" It is not without a pang that any one can be told that she who is of all the dearest has some other one who to her is the dearest.

Such pain fathers and mothers have to bear; and though, I think, the arrow is never so blunted but that it leaves something of a wound behind, there is in most cases, if not a perfect salve, still an ample consolation.

The mother knows that it is good that her child should love some man better than all the world beside, and that she should be taken away to become a wife and a mother.