Miss Marston would indeed have been the last person to reveal such a thing, but the day before her departure, in a long talk with Clara, she expressed the desire that Clara would make it certain to Susie that Dan was nothing to her. “You know,” she said, “how a person in her abandoned condition would naturally feel toward one she supposed the cause of her being abandoned. Do convince her that there has never been the slightest encouragement on my part—no intimacy whatever between me and your brother, no thought of correspondence, or anything of the kind;” and then she told Clara of the last meeting with Dan, and expressed unqualified disapproval of him altogether; at the same time sending kind messages to Susie, and a present of a microscope for her botanical studies. “There is one thing I have wished to ask you, Miss Marston,” said Clara, “but I have never dared to. Will you tell me just your true impressions of Albert?” Miss Marston did not reply satisfactorily, and Clara, putting her arm around her rather timidly, for the teacher that expressed itself in every word and manner, still continued to awe Clara, as it had done in Stonybrook, urged a reply. She had often noticed Miss Marston studying Albert. The two were very polite to each other, but it was easy to see that there was little true sympathy between them. Thus urged, Miss Marston answered: “I have studied him carefully, because he has your happiness in his hands. I confess I fear greatly that you are not just the kind of wife he should select.” Clara was grieved, not understanding Miss Marston, and she said quickly, “I have often wondered that he should think so highly of me.” “No, no. It is not a question of your worthiness. You are worthy, I think, of any one—certainly of Dr. Delano; but there is a self-sufficiency, well concealed by his culture, that will some time be very apt to run counter to your ideas of justice and devotion. I only say I fear, understand. I may be wrong; but I would urge you to avoid the first misunderstanding. It would be hard, I think, for him to examine himself with merciless justice. You have that power, which I see you inherit from your father, who is a wonderfully superior man.”