"Auntie! how can you speak like that, when you know--when you must know that I have no one in the world but you, now--no one, dearest," said Christabel, on her knees at her aunt's feet, clasping and kissing the pale transparent hands. "I have not the knack of loving many people. Jessie is very good to me, and I am fond of her as my friend and companion. Uncle Oliver is all goodness, and I am fond of him in just the same way. But I never _loved_ any one but you and Angus. Angus is gone from me, and if God takes you, Auntie, my prayer is that I may speedily follow you." "My love, that is a blasphemous prayer: it implies doubt in God's goodness. He means the young and innocent to be happy in this world--happy and a source of happiness to others. You will form new ties: a husband and children will console you for all you have lost in the past." "No, aunt, I shall never marry. Put that idea out of your mind. You will think less badly of me for refusing Leonard if you understand that I have made up my mind to live and die unmarried." "But I cannot and will not believe that, Belle: whatever you may think now, a year hence your ideas will have entirely altered. Remember my own history. When George Hamleigh died I thought the world--so far as it concerned me--had come to an end, that I had only to wait for death. My fondest hope was that I should die within the year, and be buried in a grave near his--yet five years afterwards I was a happy wife and mother." "God was good to you," said Christabel, quietly, thinking all the while that her aunt must have been made of a different clay from herself. There was a degradation in being able to forget: it implied a lower kind of organism than that finely strung nature which loves once and once only. CHAPTER VI. "THAT LIP AND VOICE ARE MUTE FOR EVER." Having pledged herself to remain with her aunt to the end, Christabel was fain to make the best of her life at Mount Royal, and in order to do this she must needs keep on good terms with her cousin. Leonard's conduct of late had been irreproachable: he was attentive to his mother, all amiability to Christabel, and almost civil to Miss Bridgeman. He contrived to make his peace with Randie, and he made such a good impression upon Major Bree that he won the warm praises of that gentleman. The cross country rides were resumed, the Major always in attendance; and Leonard and his cousin were seen so often together, riding, driving, or walking, that the idea of an engagement between them became a fixture in the local mind, which held that when one was off with the old love it was well to be on with the new.