Frank was on the point of asking his mother what he had said or done that she should congratulate and bless him in this way, but Mary’s white face and trembling hands checked the words on his lips, so he merely said, with a weary sigh, “Mother, I must go to bed at once, I am utterly worn out,” and tottered rather than walked to the door. Mrs. Varley followed him. “I may tell your father it is all settled, may I not?” she said, in a low voice, as she held open the door for him. Frank glanced back at Mary leaning still over the back of the armchair, and her drooping figure and tearful face pleaded her own cause. “Tell him what you like, mother,” he replied, wearily, “only let me rest to-night.” Besides, after all, what did it matter? The best of his life was gone, any one who would might have the broken remnants. Very angry indeed was the rector when he received his wife’s letter containing the news of his son’s engagement. “It is absolutely indecent,” he wrote back, “it is gross disrespect to the living and the dead. Every one knows the hopes my son cherished with regard to Miss Warden, and now, within a fortnight after her death, he is engaged to some one else. I will have nothing whatever to do with such an arrangement. Mr. Warden is an old and valued friend of mine, and how could I look him in the face if I countenanced such conduct on the part of my son? Is he a child or a lunatic that he cannot learn to control his own feelings and bear up against a bereavement? Let him make up his mind to bear his sorrows as a man should and as other people have had to before him.” In reply to this, Mrs. Varley wrote a long letter pleading, not so much the wisdom of her own conduct, as the necessity of the case.