Poor heart! like many another bewildered moth, Menie flutters about the subject it behoves her most to avoid, and cannot help making timid allusions to their future life in London--that future life which begins to darken before her own vision under a cloudy horizon of doubt and dread. It has ceased to be a speculation now, this future; for even within these few days there has been talk of Menie’s marriage. “We will speak of some other thing; there is no very great charm in the future for me, Menie,” said Mrs Laurie, with a sigh. But Menie, with trembling temerity, begs to know the reason why. Why?--what concerns her concerns her mother also. Very timid, yet too bold, Menie insists, and will be satisfied--why? “Because it is hard to lose my only child,” said Mrs Laurie. “Let us not deceive ourselves; it is easy to say we will not be separated, that there shall be no change. I know better, Menie; well, well! do not cry--say it is only the natural lot.” “What is only the natural lot? O mother, mother! tell me.” Menie is still pertinacious, even through her tears. “I will tell you, Menie,” said Mrs Laurie, quickly. “Randall Home and I cannot dwell under one roof in peace. I foresee a wretched life for you if we tried it; a constant struggle--a constant failure. Menie, I will try to be content; but your mother feels it hard to yield up you and your love to a stranger--very hard. I ought to be content and submissive. I ought to remember that it is the common necessity--an every-day trial; but we have been more to each other than mere mother and daughter. I cannot hide it from you, Menie; this trial is very grievous to me.” “Mother! mother!” It is not “for nothing” now that Menie Laurie weeps. “You have been the light of my eyes for twenty years--my baby, my only bairn! I have nothing in the world when you are gone. Menie, have patience with your mother. I thought we might have been one household still. I never thought I could have hurt my bairn by clinging to her with all my heart. I see through another medium now. Menie, this that I say is better for us both. I would lose my proper place--I would lose even my own esteem--if I insisted, or if I permitted you to insist, upon our first plan. I do not mean to insist with Randall,” said Mrs Laurie, with a sudden flush of colour, “but with ourselves. It is not for your credit, any more than mine, that your mother should be unnecessarily humiliated; and I choose to make this decision myself, Menie, not to have it forced upon me.” “If you think so--if I have nothing to hope but this--mother, mother!” cried Menie in her sobs, “there is yet time; we can change it all.”