If her mind could have been taken to pieces and strictly analysed as she gave utterance to this burst of real feeling, it would have afforded fruitful study to a whole college of psychologists. Yet the mental condition described as 'sitting in a clothes-basket and lifting yourself up by the handles' is quite common to humanity of both sexes, though women are as a rule the greater adepts in the art. Mrs. Boynton was really a firm believer in a Providence which was bound by many promises to help the virtuous, and George, therefore, had a claim to its assistance. The fact that Providence might possibly have appointed her as its instrument was a totally different affair, and did not interfere with the confused good faith and good feeling which made her voice thrill as she went on fervently, in answer to Dan's doubtful yet admiring face. 'Oh, you mayn't think so--you perhaps don't believe as I do, Dan, in a Providence "which shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we may"--you don't----' 'Don't I?' he asked, catching fire, as it were, more from his own thoughts than her words. 'Oh, Gwen! my dear, it's little you know of me, then, if you think that. Don't I see it?--who but the blind do not--in everything? Isn't it that which makes me content to go on as I'm doing? Gwen! it's because I know that it is bound to come--that sooner or later you will take my hands in yours as I take yours just now. Yes, Gwen! it's Fate--but when will it be, my dear? When will it be?' She was never proof against this mood in the man, this tone in his voice. 'Oh, Dan!' she cried, in a petulance that was all feigned, 'didn't I say you would be asking me to marry you to-morrow if I was so rash as to tell you that you were a comfort to me? As if that had anything to do with it.'