Everard knew that Bee meant what she said, and that her influence was worth more than that of the whole town, and if he could have felt any love or even desire for Josephine, it would have seemed easy to acknowledge his marriage, with Bee’s hopeful words in his ear and Bee’s strong nature to back him, but he did not. He had no love, no desire for her; he was happier away from her, happier to live his present life with Beatrice and Rossie; and, besides that, he could not bring her home; his father would never permit it, and would probably turn him from the door if he knew of the alliance. This Bee did not know, but he told her of the great aversion his father had conceived for the girl whom he stigmatized as the yellow-haired hussy from Massachusetts, “and after that, do you think I can tell him?” he asked. “It will be hard, I know,” Beatrice replied, “but it seems your only course, if he insists upon your marrying me.” “But if I tell him you refused me, it may make a difference, and things can go on as they are until I get my profession,” Everard pleaded, with a shrinking which he knew was cowardly from all which the telling his father might involve. “Even then you are but putting off the evil day, and a thing concealed grows worse as time goes on,” Bee said. “You must confess it some time, and why not do it now. At the most your father can but turn you from his door, and if he does that take your wife and go somewhere else. You are young, and the world is all before you, and if there is any true womanhood in Josephine, it will assert itself when she knows all you have lost for her. She will grow to your standard. She has a sweet, childish face, and must have a loving, affectionate nature. Give her a chance, Everard, to show what she is.” This giving her a chance was just what Everard dreaded the most. So long as his life with Josephine was in the future, he could be tolerably content, and even happy, but when it looked him square in the face, as something which must be met, he shrank from meeting it. “Oh, I cannot do that, at least, not yet,” he said. “It will hamper me so in my studies. I cannot tell father, and bear the storm sure to follow. Josephine must stay where she is till I see what I can do.” “But is that best for her?” Beatrice asked. “What sort of a woman is her mother? She may be a lady, and still be very poor. What is she, Everard?” He had refrained from speaking of Josephine’s antecedents to Beatrice. He would rather she should not know all he knew of the family. It would be kinder to Josephine to spare her so much; but when Beatrice appealed to him with regard to the mother, he told just who Mrs. Fleming was.