Mr. Brownlow actually shrank from her eye. He grew pale, almost green; faltered, dropped her hands--“My darling!” he said feebly. He had not once dreamt of making any revelation on this subject. He had not even intended to put it to her at all, had it not come to him, as it were, by necessity; and consequently he was quite unprepared to defend himself. As for Sara, she clung to him closer, and looked him still more keenly in the eyes. “Tell me,” she said; “I will keep my word all the same. It will make no difference to me. Papa, tell me! it is better I should know at once.” “You ought not to have asked me that question, Sara,” said Mr. Brownlow, recovering himself; “if I ask such a sacrifice of you, you shall know all about it in good time. I can’t tell; my own scheme does not look so reasonable to me as it did--I may give it up altogether. But in the mean time don’t ask me any more questions. And if you should repent, even at the last moment--” “But if it is necessary to you, papa?” said Sara, opening her eyes--“if it has to be done, what does it matter whether I repent or not?” “Nothing is necessary to me that would cost your happiness,” said Mr. Brownlow. And then they went on again for some time in silence. As for Sara, she had no inclination to have the magnificence of her sacrifice thus interfered with. For the moment her feeling was that, on the whole, it would even be better that the marriage to which she devoted herself should be an unhappy and unfit one. If it were happy it would not be a sacrifice; and to be able to repent at the last, like any commonplace young woman following her own inclinations, was not at all according to Sara’s estimation of the contract. She went on by her father’s side, thinking of that and of some other things in silence. Her thoughts were of a very different tenor from his. She was not taking the matter tragically as he supposed--no blank veil had been thrown over Sara’s future by this intimation, though Mr. Brownlow, walking absorbed by her side, was inclined to think so. On the contrary, her imagination had begun to play with the idea lightly, as with a far-off possibility in which there was some excitement, and even some amusement possible. While her father relapsed into painful consideration of the whole subject, Sara went on demurely by his side, not without the dawnings of a smile about the corners of her mouth. There was nothing said between them for a long time. It seemed to Mr. Brownlow as if the conversation had broken off at such a point that it would be hard to recommence it. He seemed to have committed and betrayed himself without doing any good whatever by it; and he was wroth at his own weakness. Softening of the brain! there might be something in what the Rector said. Perhaps it was disease, and not the pressure of circumstances, which had made him take so seriously the first note of alarm. Perhaps his whole scheme to secure Brownlows