"Would your mother have liked you to marry a poor girl, of no family--with nothing but her own virtues to speak for her ?" Horace was fairly pressed back to the wall.
"If you must know," he replied, "my mother would have refused to sanction such a marriage as that." "No matter how good the girl might have been ?" There was something defiant--almost threatening--in her tone.

Horace was annoyed--and he showed it when he spoke.
"My mother would have respected the girl, without ceasing to respect herself," he said.

"My mother would have remembered what was due to the family name." "And she would have said, No ?" "She would have said, No." "Ah!" There was an undertone of angry contempt in the exclamation which made Horace start.

"What is the matter ?" he asked.
"Nothing," she answered, and took up her embroidery again.

There he sat at her side, anxiously looking at her--his hope in the future centered in his marriage! In a week more, if she chose, she might enter that ancient family of which he had spoken so proudly, as his wife.