She would have fallen, as much from weakness as emotion, on her entrance into the parlour, but that Laurence darted forward and caught her in an embrace which brought back somewhat of her lost colour; and if anything could have softened the pain of that hour to her parents, it was the apparent ardour and sincerity of the lover, the hope that a genuine passion might tend to wean him from his old habits and associates. Mr. Aspinall’s reception of Augusta was characteristic. “My charming Miss Ashton, I see my son has brought back the roses to your cheeks. May they never fade again, but bloom perennially without a thorn! I rejoice to kiss your hand paternally on this auspicious occasion, and to assure you that I shall be proud to welcome such beauty and such constancy as the wife of my noble son.” Consent once obtained, the Aspinalls were as eager to press forward the marriage as the Ashtons were to retard it, neither her father nor mother affecting a satisfaction they did not feel. “My dear,” said the latter to Augusta one day, when her eyes were sparkling over a costly present just received from Laurence, “your father was in hopes you would have fixed your heart on some good steady man like Jabez Clegg, who would have been a comfort and a credit to all of us, and have kept the business in the family after we were in our graves.” “Pshaw, mamma! how preposterous! I am surprised at my father’s infatuation for that young man. I esteem him quite sufficiently for a friend, but”—and she locked an emerald earring in her delicate ear—“I could not exist with a husband whose heart was in his business. My husband’s heart must hold me and me only; and I must have something to look at as well as to love.” “Ah! Augusta, it must be a very small heart indeed which cannot find room both for a wife and a business to maintain her fittingly. The sheen of a dress which must last a life is of less consequence than its durable texture.” “Well, mamma, so long as the material pleases my eyes, I will take the wear upon trust. And do not be surprised that _your_ daughter prefers a fine man and a gentleman to one whose fortune is in the clouds, and whose origin is so obscure, he has not _even a name_ to call his own.” She was standing to admire herself and her new jewellery in the Venetian glass between the windows as she said this, and her mother’s figure filling in the frame, Jabez Clegg came and went unseen, a pang in his heart and an intensified resolve to make both fortune and name for himself even though his master’s daughter vanished from his vision.