“You are very closely and tenderly related to the young lady I have learned to adore,” the young man said, leaning forward on his low chair until one knee almost touched the carpet. “I called her a Mauverensen because she is worthy of that historic blood, but it was her mother’s, not her father’s name. Mrs. Minster, I love your daughter Kate!” “Goodness me!” was the astonished lady’s comment. She stared at the young man in suppliant attitude before her, in very considerable confusion of thought, and for what seemed to him an intolerable time. “I am afraid it wouldn’t do at all,” she said first, doubtingly. Then she added, as if thinking aloud: “I might have known Kate was keeping something from me. She hasn’t been herself at all these last few weeks.” “But she has not been keeping _this_ from you, Mrs. Minster,” urged the young man, in his softest voice. “It is my own secret--all my own--kept locked in the inner tabernacle of my heart until this very moment, when I revealed it to you.” “You mean that Kate--my daughter--does not know of this?” “She must know that I worship the ground she treads on--she would be blind not to realize that--but I have never said a word to her about it. No, not a word!” Mrs. Minster uttered the little monosyllable “oh!” with a hesitating, long-drawn-out sound. It was evident that this revelation altered matters in her mind, and Horace hurried on: “No,” he said; “the relation between mother and child has always seemed to pie the most sacred thing on earth--perhaps because my own mother died so many, many years ago. I would rather stifle my own feelings than let an act of mine desecrate or imperil that relation. It may be that I am old-fashioned, Mrs. Minster,” the young man continued, with a deprecatory smile, “but I like the old habit of the good families--that of deferring to the parents. I say that to them the chief courtesy and deference are due. I know it is out of date, but I have always felt that way. So I speak to you first. I say to you with profound respect that you have reared the loveliest and best of all the daughters of the sons of men, and that if you will only entertain the idea of permitting me to strive to win her love, I shall be the proudest and happiest mortal on earth.” Whatever might betide with the daughter, the conquest of the mother was easy and complete. “I like your sentiments very much indeed,” she said, with evident sincerity. “And I like you too. I may as well tell you so. Of course I haven’t the least idea what Kate will say.”