"O, mamma, dear kind mamma, do have an opinion of your own for once in a way! I daresay Mr. Sheldon is the best possible judge of everything connected with the Stock Exchange and the money-market; but don't let him choose a husband for me. Let me have your approval, mamma, and I care for no one else. I don't want to marry against your will. But I am sure you like Mr. Hawkehurst." Mrs. Sheldon shook her head despondingly. "It's all very well to like an agreeable young man as an occasional visitor," she said, "especially when most of one's visitors are middle-aged City people. But it is a very different thing when one's only daughter talks of marrying him. I can't imagine what can have put such an idea as marriage into your head. It is only a few months since you came home from school; and I fancied that you would have stopped with me for years before you thought of settling." Miss Halliday made a wry face. "Dear mamma," she said, "I don't want to 'settle.' That is what one's housemaid says, isn't it, when she talks of leaving service and marrying some young man from the baker's or the grocer's? Valentine and I are not in a hurry to be married. I am sure, for my own part, I don't care how long our engagement lasts. I only wish to be quite candid and truthful with you, mamma; and I thought it a kind of duty to tell you that he loves me, and that--I love him--very dearly." These last words were spoken with extreme shyness. Mrs. Sheldon laid down her hair-brushes while she contemplated her daughter's blushing face. Those blushes had become quite a chronic affection with Miss Halliday of late. "But, good gracious me, Charlotte," she exclaimed, growing peevish in her sense of helplessness, "who is to tell Mr. Sheldon?" "There is no necessity for Mr. Sheldon to be enlightened yet awhile, mamma. It is to you I owe duty and obedience--not to him. Pray keep my secret, kindest and most indulgent of mothers, and--and ask Valentine to come and see you now and then." "Ask him to come and see me, Charlotte! You must know very well that I never invite any one to dinner except at Mr. Sheldon's wish. I am sure I quite tremble at the idea of a dinner. There is such trouble about the waiting, and such dreadful uncertainty about the cooking. And if one has it all done by Birch's people, one's cook gives warning next morning," added poor Georgy, with a dismal recollection of recent perplexities. "I am sure I often wish myself young again, in the dairy at Hyley farm, making matrimony cakes for a tea-party, with a ring and a fourpenny-piece hidden in the middle. I'm sure the Hyley tea-parties were pleasanter than Mr. Sheldon's dinners, with those solemn City people, who can't exist without clear turtle and red mullet."