This was Mark Ray's advice, and it had great weight with Wilford, who
knew that Mark came, if possible, from a better line of ancestry than
himself, inasmuch as his maternal grandmother was a near relative of the
English Percys, and the daughter of a lord. And still Wilford hesitated,
waiting until the winter was over before he came to the decision which
when it was reached was firm as a granite rock. He had made up his mind
at last to marry Katy Lennox if she would accept him, and he told his
mother so in the presence of his sisters, when one evening they were all
kept at home by the rain. There was a sudden uplifting of Bell's
eyelashes, a contemptuous shrug of her shoulders, and then she went on
with the book she was reading, wondering if Katy was at all inclined to
literature, and thinking if she were that it might be easier to tolerate
her. Juno, who was expected to say the sharpest things, turned upon him
with the exclamation:

"If you can stand those two feather beds, you can do more than I
supposed," and as one means of showing her disapproval, she quitted the
room, while Bell, who had taken to writing articles on the follies of
the age, soon followed her sister to elaborate an idea suggested to her
mind by her brother's contemplated marriage.

Thus left alone with her son, Mrs. Cameron tried all her powers of
persuasion upon him in vain. But nothing she said influenced him in the
least, seeing which she suddenly confronted him with the question:
"Shall you tell her all? A husband should have no secrets of that kind
from his wife."

Wilford's face was white as ashes, and his voice trembled as he replied:
"Yes, mother, I shall tell her all; but, oh! you do not know how hard it
has been for me to bring my mind to that, or how sorry I am that we ever