Her love seemed to have ceased to be real, now that it was being talked about and struggled over, and Ernest, Ernest himself----. She would not say, even in the depths of her own heart, any more than this; but her poor little heart gave an inarticulate cry when he opened up his philosophy to her with so much confidence, and congratulated himself that she knew nothing of business. Nelly did not know whether, perhaps, among the strange confusions of this world, he might not be right. She saw no way out of the maze. She did not know how she herself, if left to herself, could have bettered it; but her instinctive sense of what was noble and ignoble, lovely and unlovely, was deeply wounded. She was put out of harmony with herself and every one. If life was so--if such gulfs were ready to open under your feet at your very first step in it, was it worth living? Such was the painful question, not yet put into words, that breathed through poor Nelly’s heart. Mr. John Vane was on one side of her, and Ernest on the other; but Mrs. Everard, who was a great conversationalist, had taken possession of young Molyneux, and was putting him through a catechism. Nelly did not feel herself capable of talk, but the kind looks of her next neighbour were comforting, and he was touched by her downcast, yet bright, face. “Miss Eastwood,” he said, “may I guess at something? I am a stranger, but I am a connexion. You know your mother admitted my claims. This is a solemn family assembly to celebrate something that is to make your happiness. Have I guessed rightly; and will you forgive me, and let me make my congratulations too?” Nelly looked up, blushing and bright and sorry, and very much tempted to cry. “Oh, Mr. Vane, I can’t bear it,” she said. “What, not the happiness? I could bear a great deal of it if it ever came my way.” “Has it never come your way?” said Nelly, looking at him wistfully. “But I did not mean--the happiness. I have always been very happy. It is the family assembly, and the talk, and the congratulations. If you don’t know, you can’t think how they hurt, how they----” “Take the bloom off?” “I suppose that is it,” said Nelly, with a soft little sigh. Vane, who had a great deal more experience than she gave him credit for, looked past her at her lover, and concluded, on perfectly insufficient grounds, that Molyneux was not worthy of Nelly. The ladies of Ernest’s family were not only convinced of the fact that Nelly was quite unworthy of _him_, but that Frederick also was really misplaced in such a family. Why such ideas should be so readily entertained by the different halves of humanity, I cannot tell. It was something in Nelly’s tone and something in the cut of Ernest’s nose which decided Mr. Vane. “And would it be impertinent of a stranger, who is a connexion, to ask if it is all settled,” he said, “and when it is to be?”