"Oh, but it's hard!" and the cry of long-smothered pain burst out.
"Hard enough to have to earn one's bread in a way one doesn't like;
harder still to have to be parted from Johanna from Monday morning
till Saturday night. But it must be, I'll go. It's a case between
hunger, debt, and work: the first is unpleasant, the second
impossible, the third is my only alternative. You must consent,
Selina, for I will do it."

"Don't!" Selina spoke more gently, and not without some natural
emotion. "Don't disgrace me, child; for I may as well tell you--I
meant to do so to-night--Mr. Ascott has made me an offer of marriage,
and I--I have accepted it." Had a thunder-bolt fallen in the middle
of the parlor at No. 15, its inmates--that is, two of them--could not
have been more astounded.

No doubt this surprise was a great instance of simplicity on their
part. Many women would have prognosticated, planned the thing from
the first; thought it a most excellent match; seen glorious visions
of the house in Russell Square, of the wealth and luxury that would
be the portion of "dear Selina," and the general benefit that the
marriage would be to the whole Leaf family.

But these two were different from others. They only saw their sister
Selina, a woman no longer young, and not without her peculiarities,
going to be married to a man she knew little or nothing about--a man
whom they themselves had endured rather than liked, and for the sake
of gratitude. He was trying enough merely as a chance visitor; but to
look upon Mr. Ascott as a brother-in-law, as a husband-- "Oh, Selina!
you can not be in earnest?"