'The last hours of my dear father would have been very sad had it not been for Alston. All was confusion in his affairs; there had not been time to disentangle them, as Alston was striving to do, and he could not have died in peace without the assurance which Alston gave him that aunt Catherine and I should be well cared for. He would not tell my father that he had asked me to marry him, because he feared my father might ask me for a promise made to _himself_, and so fetter the freedom of my will; but when I understood this reticence and the high honour that dictated it, and how much it would rejoice my father and take the sting from his death to know that I should be safe, with _such_ safety, I told him in Alston's presence that he had asked me to be his wife, and that I had reserved the answer until now. My father placed my hand in Alston's, and from that moment I believe not one care belonging to this world troubled him. He told aunt Catherine that he did not wish any needless delay to be made about the marriage, that it should take place when a decent time should have elapsed after his death. 'When the sad funeral was over, as soon as I could bear to see him, I told Alston all about Thornton. The "all" was not very much, but he still more fully proved to me that he was a high-minded man by the way in which he heard it, and the unasked promise which he gave me that Thornton's interests should also be his care. He could not do anything to help him just then, without sending to New York for him (I have omitted to mention that Thornton had got a better berth than his first, and gone to New Orleans), but there was something which he had in view that he thought would exactly suit him likely to turn up after a while. 'He wished me to write at once to Thornton and tell him of my approaching marriage, but not to mention his intention of serving him; that, he said, would come more graciously afterwards. I did write to Thornton, but he did not answer my letter until he addressed me as Alston's wife, and then I did not hear from him again for a long time--he had gone on a trip to the Dominion for his employers--not until just before baby was born. 'But I am not jotting down my own story, for, after all, there is not much of Thornton in that, though I seem to put a great deal of him in this. Our wedding was a very quiet one, and on my wedding-day I took leave of the Mills.