"Nay, but I am too much _your_ friend," said Mercy. "Be less my friend then, and more my darling." He pressed her, he urged her, he stuck to her, he pestered her. She snubbed, and evaded, and parried, and liked him all the better for his pestering her. At last, one day, she said: "If Mrs. Gaunt thinks it will be for your happiness, I _will_--in six months' time; but you shall not marry in haste to repent at leisure. And I must have time to learn two things,--whether you can be constant to a simple woman like me, and whether I can love again, as tenderly as you deserve to be loved." All his endeavors to shake this determination were vain. Mercy Vint had a terrible deal of quiet resolution. He retired to Cumberland, and, in a long letter, asked Mrs. Gaunt's advice. She replied characteristically. She began very soberly to say that she should be the last to advise a marriage between persons of different conditions in life. "But then," said she, "this Mercy is altogether an exception. If a flower grows on a dunghill, 't is still a flower, and not a part of the dunghill. She has the essence of gentility, and indeed her _manners_ are better bred than most of our ladies. There is too much affectation abroad, and that is your true vulgarity. Tack 'my lady' on to 'Mercy Vint,' and that dignified and quiet simplicity of hers will carry her with credit through every court in Europe. Then think of her virtues,"--(here the writer began to lose her temper,)--"where can you hope to find such another? She is a moral genius, and acts well, no matter under what temptation, as surely as Claude and Raphael paint well. Why, sir, what do you seek in a wife? Wealth? title? family? But you possess them already; you want something in addition that will make you happy. Well, take that angelic goodness into your house, and you will find, by your own absolute happiness, how ill your neighbors have wived. For my part, I see but one objection: the child. Well, if you are man enough to take the mother, I am woman enough to take the babe. In one word, he who has the sense to fall in love with such an angel, and has not the sense to marry it, if he can, is a fool. "Postscript.--My poor friend, to what end think you I sent you down in the coach with her?" * * * * * Sir George, thus advised, acted as he would have done had the advice been just the opposite. He sent Mercy a love-letter by every post, and he often received one in return; only his were passionate, and hers gentle and affectionate. But one day came a letter that was a mere cry of distress. "George, my child is dying. What shall I do?" He mounted his horse, and rode to her. He came too late. The little boy had died suddenly of croup, and was to be buried next morning. The poor mother received him up stairs, and her grief was terrible. She clung sobbing to him, and could not be comforted. Yet she felt his coming. But a mother's anguish overpowered all.