"Sidney," said Mattie, after a second pause, "I will not give you my answer to-night--I will not say that I will be your wife, for better for worse, until this day month. It is a grave question, and I ought not to decide this hastily. I must think--I _must_ think!" "Ah! Mattie, you don't love me, or it would be easy enough to say 'Yes,'" said Sidney. "No, not easy." "I can read my fate--eternal isolation!" he said gloomily. "Patience--you can trust me; let me think for a while if I can trust in you. You do not wish my unhappiness, Sid?" "God forbid!" "We have been good friends hitherto--brother and sister. For one more month, let us keep brother and sister still; there is no danger of our teaching ourselves to love one another less in that period. In that month will you think seriously of me--not of what will make me happy--but what will render _you_ happy, as the fairy books say, for ever afterwards? Remember that it is for ever in this life, and that I am to sit by your side and take that place in your heart which you had once reserved for another--think of all this, and be honest and fair with me." "I see. You distrust my love. You have no faith in my stability." "I say nothing, Sidney, but that I feel it would be wrong to answer hastily. Are you offended with my caution?" "No--God bless you, Mattie!--you are right enough." "This day month I will take my place at your side, and give you truly and faithfully my answer. It is not a long while to wait--we shall have both thought more intently of this change." She left him, to begin his thoughts anew; her reply had disturbed his equanimity; he neither understood Mattie nor himself just then. What had perplexed him?--what had come over the spirit of his dream to trouble his mind, or conscience, in so strange a manner? Mattie went to her room and locked the door upon her thoughts, upon that new wild sense of happiness which she had never known before, and which, despite the character she had assumed--yes, assumed!--she could not keep in the background of that matter-of-fact life, now vanishing away from her. She knew that she had acted for the best in giving him time to think again of the nature of his proposition--in restraining that impulse to weep upon his shoulder, and feel those strong arms enfolding her to his breast. The old days had startled her when he had spoken in so firm and hard a manner; that figure of the past which had been all to him flitted there still, and held her back, and stood between herself and him, despite the new happiness she felt, and which no past could wholly scare away.