'A little while after Thornton went away to New York I first saw Alston. He came to Holland Mills on some business connected with papa's affairs, and merely in a business capacity. My father and he had not met previously, and we knew nothing of him except that he was a prosperous merchant of New York, and I think we had a little of the sense of shrinking and depression--I mean aunt Catherine and I had--which comes to unprosperous people in the sight of those whose lot is far different. A very little time, a very brief acquaintance with Mr. Griswold, did away with such a feeling as this, and turned him into a friend. 'My father took to him from the first, and as to aunt Catherine, I never knew her to like any man who was not a minister so much, or to believe in him so implicitly. He brought relief and cheerfulness with him, that was plain, and at first all he did was quite for papa's sake. After a while, he began to care very much about me, and, like a gentleman, as he is in everything, he told me that he loved me, and hoped I might in time come to love him well enough to marry him, but that I must not regard the matter as having anything whatever to do with the efforts he was making on my father's behalf. He would continue them as zealously as ever, whether I decided for or against him. 'I can never forget how Alston appeared that day. I had not thought about loving him, though of course I knew, as every woman knows such things, how he felt towards me; but when he spoke this to me, I felt that it would not be hard to love such a man, and that it would be a blessed fate to become his wife. 'He did not press me for an answer then; he said I must consider it until his next visit, and I promised him that I would do so. But before his next visit, ah, what a change had fallen on us all! My father had met with a terrible accident in the mill; he was hopelessly injured, and when Alston came it was to see him on his deathbed.