"I don't think you can mean to insult me, Miss Marjoribanks," said the widow, "after being so kind. Perhaps I have been trying you too much by what I have said; though I am sure I would have given up everything, and gone away anywhere, rather than be the cause of anything unpleasant. You know that it was my poor dear Edward I was married to; you know I have a--a horror," said Mrs Mortimer, faltering, "in general--of second marriages." "Oh, yes," said Lucilla, "but there are always exceptions, you know; and when people have no children, nor anything--and you that were so young. I always make exceptions, for my part; and if you could only get over this one point," Miss Marjoribanks added, making a dexterous strategical movement. But Mrs Mortimer only shook her head. "I don't think I am hard to get on with," she said; "but my poor Edward always said one must make a stand somewhere. He used to say I was so easy to be persuaded. He was glad to see I had a point to make a stand on, instead of being disagreeable about it, or thinking he was anything to me. And oh, Lucilla, he was so kind to him," said the widow, with tears in her eyes. "We met him quite by chance, and he was so kind. I will never forget it, if I should live a hundred years. And why should Charles be in such a way? He never did him any harm! If any one was injured, it was me, and I never felt myself injured--neither did Edward. On the contrary, he _always_ did him justice, Lucilla," Mrs Mortimer continued, fixing a pathetic look upon her friend. What could Lucilla do? She was burning to take it all in her own hands, and arrange it somehow, and unite the two lovers who had been so long separated; but unless she could understand what the point was on which Mrs Mortimer made her stand, what could she do? "I never could understand," said the widow, who began to feel her heart sick with the disappointment of that hope which she had fixed in Miss Marjoribanks, "why he should take it so much to heart. Poor Edward never thought of such a thing! and why he should be so set against poor Mr Kavan, and so----Lucilla! oh, tell me, do you see anything? what do you mean?"