He had heard men say they never valued a mother’s love till it could be given to them never more. Was this what Miss Hope desired to imply? Did she think Heather delicate? Did she imagine there was any fear of her fading away and leaving him? What would his life be without Heather? Who would ever again bear with him, think for him, love him, like the woman whom he now feared to face,—whom he now rode slowly on to meet, slowly though he knew she was waiting and watching for his arrival? What a game of cross-purposes love is altogether! What a stake some people throw down on the board, what despairing losers many walk forth again into the world! Make your game, gentlemen, make your game, it is all a matter of business! The world must not stand still, even though hearts be broken. Make your game! The game is made, and here is the result: a great intellect mated to a fool, a fond woman mismatched with a weak, or brutal, or unloving husband! What, complaining? You played for happiness and you have lost. There are other gamblers coming forward—pray stand aside. Or it is a lottery, and the people come up to draw. Only a doll, only an idiot, a shrew, a tyrant, a faithless husband, a coquettish wife, a plausible pretender: a woman all paint and padding, all affectation and extravagance,—a man polished enough in his manners, yet coarse and repulsive in the ordinary course of every-day domestic life! And you grumble? Pray, Sir, and Madam, did you not pay your money and take your chance? Have you not drawn _something_ out of the matrimonial lottery? It does not suit you? Oh! we can have no exchanges here! there are your goods, take them. “Here’s a lottery in which no man draws a blank!” and so forth till the end of time; so forth, while the men and the women go home with their purchases, and shrine them or curse them, according as the goods suit or their tempers incline. What a game of cross-purposes! what a lottery of incongruous chances! What a singular thing that Arthur and Heather should ever have married! What a still more marvellous affair, that only after the years, the possibility should occur to him of her affection weakening, of her love decaying! What an awful mistake it is men and women alike make, when they imagine that because love has been, love will be, always! As though there were any human attachment which constant dropping could not wear away; as though the devotion existed which neglect and distrust, unkindness and coldness, would not ultimately alienate! Can the tendrils go on for ever feeling after a support which is removed from them? Will there not come a day when they will either wither away, or otherwise turn elsewhere for something around which to twine? Was that what Miss Hope meant? or did she only intend to imply that one day, when he wanted the love, and the help, and the companionship he now spurned, he should stretch forth his hands in vain to meet only vacancy?