“Well, no,” said Sara, candidly; “refusing people is very clumsy sort of work, unless you want to tell of it after, and that is mean. I did not refuse him. I only contrived, you know, that he should not speak.” “Well, I suppose that it comes to about the same thing,” said Mr. Brownlow. “What I am going to say now is very serious. You once told me you would marry the man I asked you to marry. Hush, my darling, don’t speak yet. I dare say you never thought I would ask such a proof of confidence from you; but there are strange turns in circumstances. I am not going to be cruel, like a tyrannical father in a book; but if I were to ask you to do such a great thing for me--to do it blindly without asking questions, to try to love and to marry a man, not of your own choice, but mine--Sara, would you do it? Don’t speak yet. I would not bind you. At the last moment you should be free to withdraw from the bargain--” “Let me speak, papa!” cried Sara. “Do you mean to say that you _need_ this--that you really _want_ it? Is it something that can’t be done any other way? first tell me that.” “I don’t think it can be done any other way,” said Mr. Brownlow sadly, with a sigh. “Then of course I will do it,” said Sara. She turned to him as she spoke, and fixed her eyes intently on his face. Her levity, her lightness, her careless freedom were all gone. No doubt she had meant the original promise, as she said, but she had made it with a certain gay bravado, little dreaming of any thing to follow. Now she was suddenly sobered and silenced. There was no mistaking the reality in Mr. Brownlow’s face. Sara was not a careful, thoughtful woman; she was a creature who leaped at conclusions, and would not linger over the most solemn decision. And then she was not old enough to see both sides of a question. She jumped at it, and gave her pledge, and fixed her fate more quickly than another temperament would have chosen a pair of gloves. But for all that she was very grave. She looked up in her father’s face, questioning him with her eyes. She was ready to put her life in his hands, to give him her future, her happiness, as if it had been a flower for his coat. But yet she was sufficiently roused to see that this was no laughing matter. “Of course I will do it,” she repeated without any grandeur of expression; but she never looked so grave, or had been so serious all her life.