"Perhaps you do not know with how little I could be satisfied," urged the Major, opposing what he imagined to be a romantic scruple with the shrewd common-sense of his fifty years' experience. "I want a friend, a companion, a helpmate, and I am sure you could be all those to me. If I could only make you happy!" "You could not!" interrupted Jessie, with cruel decisiveness. "Pray, never speak of this again, dear Major Bree. Your friendship has been very pleasant to me; it has been one of the many charms of my life at Mount Royal. I would not lose it for the world. And we can always be friends, if you will only remember that I have made up my mind--irrevocably--never to marry." "I must needs obey you," said the Major, deeply disappointed, but too unselfish to be angry. "I will not be importunate. Yet one word I must say. Your future--if you do not marry--what is that to be? Of course, so long as Mrs. Tregonell lives, your home will be at Mount Royal--but I fear that does not settle the question for long. My dear friend does not appear to me a long-lived woman. I have seen traces of premature decay. When Christabel is married, and Mrs. Tregonell is dead, where is your home to be?" "Providence will find me one," answered Jessie, cheerfully. "Providence is wonderfully kind to plain little spinsters with a knack of making themselves useful. I have been doing my best to educate myself ever since I have been at Mount Royal. It is so easy to improve one's mind when there are no daily worries about the tax-gatherer and the milkman--and when I am called upon to seek a new home, I can go out as a governess--and drink the cup of life as it is mixed for governesses--as Charlotte Brontë says. Perhaps I shall write a novel, as she did, although I have not her genius." "I would not be sure of that," said the Major. "I believe there is some kind of internal fire burning you up, although you are outwardly so quiet. I think it would have been your salvation to accept the jog-trot life and peaceful home I have offered you." "Very likely," replied Jessie, with a shrug and a sigh. "But how many people reject salvation. They would rather be miserable in their own way than happy in anybody else's way." The Major answered never a word. For him all the glory of the day had faded. He walked slowly on by Jessie's side, meditating upon her words--wondering why she had so resolutely refused him. There had been not the least wavering--she had not even seemed to be taken by surprise--her mind had been made up long ago--not him, nor any other man, would she wed. "Some early disappointment, perhaps," mused the Major--"a curate at Shepherd's Bush--those young men have a great deal to answer for." They came to the hyacinth dell--an earthly paradise to the two happy lovers, who were sitting on a mossy bank, in a sheet of azure bloom, which, seen from the distance, athwart young trees, looked like blue, bright water.