This was Mark Ray’s advice, and it had great weight with Wilford, who knew that Mark came, if possible, from a better line of ancestry than himself. And still Wilford hesitated, waiting until the winter was over, before he came to the decision which, when it was reached, was firm as a granite rock. He had made up his mind at last to marry Katy Lennox if she would accept him, and he told his mother so in presence of his sisters, when one evening they were all kept at home by the rain. There was a sudden uplifting of Bell’s eyelashes, a contemptuous shrug of her shoulders, and then she went on with the book she was reading, wondering if Katy was at all inclined to literature, and thinking if she were that it might be easier to tolerate her. Juno, who was expected to say the sharpest things, turned upon him with the exclamation, “If you can stand those two feather beds, you can do more than I supposed,” and as one means of showing her disapproval, she quitted the room, while Bell, who had taken to writing articles on the follies of the age, soon followed her sister to elaborate an idea suggested to her mind by her brother’s contemplated marriage. Thus left alone with her son, Mrs. Cameron tried all her powers of persuasion upon him. But nothing she said influenced him in the least, seeing which she suddenly confronted him with the question, “Shall you tell her _all_? A husband should have no secrets of that kind from his wife.” Wilford’s face was white as ashes, and his voice trembled as he replied, “Yes, mother, I shall tell her all; but, oh! you do not know how hard it has been for me to bring my mind to that, or how sorry I am that we ever kept that secret—when Genevra died——” “Hush—h!” came warningly from the mother as Juno reappeared, the warning indicating that Genevra was a name never mentioned, except by mother and son. As Juno remained, the conversation was not resumed, and the next morning Wilford wrote to Katy Lennox the letter which carried to her so much of joy, and to Dr. Grant so much of grief. To wait four weeks, as Katy said he must, was a terrible trial to Wilford, who counted every moment which kept him from her side. It was all owing to Dr. Grant and that perpendicular Helen, he knew, for Katy in her letter had admitted that the waiting was wholly their suggestion; and Wilford’s thoughts concerning them were anything but complimentary, until a new idea was suggested, which drove every other consideration from his mind. Wilford was naturally _jealous_, but that fault had once led him into so deep a trouble that he had struggled to overcome it, and now, at its first approach, after he thought it dead, he tried to shake it off—tried not to believe that Morris cared especially for Katy. But the mere possibility was unendurable, and in a most feverish state of excitement he started again for Silverton.