"I am sure I am much obliged to you, aunt; but there really was nothing in it. That is, I was seized with various impulses on the subject, and rather agreed with you: but I never mentioned the matter to any of the Miss Gaythornes. They are charming girls, and I don't suppose would have looked at me. At the same time, I did not feel it possible to imagine myself in love with any of them. That's quite a long time since," he added with a laugh. "Then there have been others since then? Let us put him in the confessional, mother," cried Elinor with a laugh. "He ought not to have any secrets of that description from you and me." "Oh, yes, there have been others since," said John. "To tell the truth, I have walked round a great many nice girls asking myself whether I shouldn't find it very delightful to have one of them belonging to me. I wasn't worthy the least attractive of them all, I quite knew; but still I am about the same as other men. However, as I've said, I never mentioned the matter to any of them." "Never?" cried Mrs. Dennistoun, feeling a hesitation in his tone. He laughed a little, shamefaced: "Well, if you like, I will say hardly ever," he said. "There was one that might, perhaps, have taken pity upon me--but fortunately an old lover of hers, who was much more enterprising, turned up before anything decisive had been said." "Fortunately, John?" "Well, yes, I thought so. You see I am not a marrying man. I tried to screw myself up to the point, but it was altogether, I am afraid, as a matter of principle. I thought it would be a good thing, perhaps, to have a wife." "That was a very cold-blooded idea. No wonder you--it never came to anything. That is not the way to go about it," said Elinor with the ringing laugh of a child. And yet her way of going about it had been far from a success. How curious that she did not remember that! "Yes," he said, "I am quite aware that I did not go about it in the right way, but then that was the only way in which it presented itself to me; and when I had made up my mind at last that it was a failure, I confess it was with a certain sense of relief. I suppose I was born to live and die an old bachelor." "Do not be so sure of that," said Elinor. "Some day or other, in the most unlooked-for moment, the fairy princess will bound upon the scene, and the old bachelor will be lost." "We'll wait quite contentedly for that day--which I don't believe in," he said. Mrs. Dennistoun did not take any part in the later portion of this discussion; her smile was feeble at the places where Elinor laughed. She said seriously after this fireside conference, when he got up to prepare for dinner, putting her hand tenderly on his shoulder, "I wish you had found some one you could have loved, John." "So did I--for a time," he said, lightly. "But you see, it was not to be."