"Heaven knows," answered Christabel, tears welling up in her eyes, as she turned her head from the questioner. "My life will be little worth living when she is gone--but I daresay I shall go on living, all the same. Sorrow takes such a long time to kill any one. I suppose Jessie and I will go on the Continent, and travel from place to place, trying to forget the old dear life among new scenes and new people." "And nicely you will get yourself talked about," said Leonard, with that unhesitating brutality which his friends called frankness--"a young and handsome woman, without any male relative, wandering about the Continent." "I shall have Jessie." "A paid companion--a vast protection she would be to you--about as much as a Pomeranian dog, or a poll parrot." "Then I can stay in England," answered Christabel, indifferently. "It will matter very little where I live." "Come, Belle," said Leonard, in a friendly, comfortable tone, laying his broad strong hand on her horse's neck, as they rode slowly side by side up the narrow road, between hedges filled with honeysuckle and eglantine, "this is flying in the face of Providence, which has made you young and handsome, and an heiress, in order that you might get the most out of life. Is a young woman's life to come to an end all at once because an elderly woman dies? That's rank nonsense. That's the kind of way widows talk in their first edition of crape and caps. But they don't mean it, my dear; or, say they think they mean it, they never hold by it. That kind of widow is always a wife again before the second year of her widowhood is over. And to hear you--not quite one-and-twenty, and as fit as a fid--in the very zenith of your beauty," said Leonard, hastily correcting the horsey turn of his compliment,--"to hear you talk in that despairing way is too provoking. Come, Belle, be rational. Why should you go wandering about Switzerland and Italy with a shrewish little old maid like Jessie Bridgeman--when--when you can stay at Mount Royal and be its mistress. I always meant you to be my wife, Belle, and I still mean it--in spite of bygones." "You are very good--very forgiving," said Christabel, with most irritating placidity, "but unfortunately I never meant to be your wife then--and I don't mean it now." "In plain words, you reject me?" "If you intend this for an offer, most decidedly," answered Christabel, as firm as a rock. "Come, Leonard, don't look so angry; let us be friends and cousins--almost brother and sister--as we have been in all the years that are gone. Let us unite in the endeavour to make your dear mother's life happy--so happy, that she may grow strong and well again--restored by perfect freedom from care. If you and I were to quarrel she would be miserable. We must be good friends always--if it were only for her sake."