The girl could not forgive her mother's disparagement of her idol,--the mother had no mercy upon her daughter's folly; and after much wearisome contention and domestic misery--carefully hidden from the penniless sybarite in the parlour--after many tears and heart-burnings, and wakeful nights and prayerful watches, Mary Anne Kepp consented to leave the house quietly one morning with the gentleman lodger while the widow had gone to market.

Miss Kepp left a piteous little note for her mother, rather ungrammatical, but very womanly and tender, imploring pardon for her want of duty; and, "O, mother, if you knew how good and nobel he is, you coudent be angery with me for luving him has I do, and we shall come back to you after oure marige, wich you will be pade up honourabel to the last farthin'." After writing this epistle in the kitchen, with more deliberation and more smudging than Captain Paget would have cared to behold in the bride of his choice, Mary Anne attired herself in her Sabbath-day raiment, and left Tulliver's-terrace with the Captain in a cab.

She would fain have taken a little lavender paper-covered box that contained the remainder of her wardrobe, but after surveying it with a shudder, Captain Paget told her that such a box would condemn them _anywhere_.
"You may get on sometimes without luggage, my dear," he said sententiously; "but with such luggage as _that_, never!" The girl obeyed without comprehending.

It was not often that she understood her lover's meaning, nor did he particularly care that she should understand him.

He talked to her rather in the same spirit in which one talks to a faithful canine companion--as Napoleon III.