It was not he, but the cold, proud mother, who so haughtily refused William's request, accusing him of taking underhanded means to win her daughter's affections.
"I had rather see you dead!" said the stony-hearted woman, when Jenny knelt at her feet, and pleaded for her to take back the words she had spoken--"I had rather see you dead, than married to such as _he_.

I mean what I have said, and you will never be his." Jenny knew William too well to think he would ever sanction an act of disobedience to her mother, and her heart grew faint, and her eyes dim with tears, as she thought of conquering the love which had grown with her growth, and strengthened with her strength.

There was another reason, too, why Jenny should weep as she sat there alone in her room.
From her father she had heard of all that was to happen.

The luxuries to which all her life she had been accustomed, were to be hers no longer.

The pleasant country house in Chicopee, dearer far than her city home, must be sold, and nowhere in the wide world, was there a place for them to rest.
It was of all this that Jenny was thinking that dreary afternoon; and when at last she turned away from the window, her thoughts went back again to her sister, and she murmured, "If _she_ could only live." But it could not be;--the fiat had gone forth, and Rose, like the fair summer flower whose name she bore, must fade and pass away.