be in love, though I did not suspect it before. But when I strive to
conjecture the object, I am as much perplexed as yourself; and with you, I
ask, who can it be?"

"Whoever it be," said Mrs. Poyntz, who had paused, while I spoke, from
her knitting, and now resumed it very slowly and very carefully, as if her
mind and her knitting worked in unison together,--"whoever it be, love in
you would be serious; and, with or without love, marriage is a serious
thing to us all. It is not every pretty girl that would suit Allen
Fenwick."

"Alas! is there any pretty girl whom Allen Fenwick would suit?"

"Tut! You should be above the fretful vanity that lays traps for a
compliment. Yes; the time has come in your life and your career when you
would do well to marry. I give my consent to that," she added with a
smile as if in jest, and a slight nod as if in earnest. The knitting here
went on more decidedly, more quickly. "But I do not yet see the person.
No! 'T is a pity, Allen Fenwick" (whenever Mrs. Poyntz called me by my
Christian name, she always assumed her majestic motherly manner),--"a
pity that, with your birth, energies, perseverance, talents, and, let me
add, your advantages of manner and person,--a pity that you did not choose
a career that might achieve higher fortunes and louder fame than the most
brilliant success can give to a provincial physician. But in that very
choice you interest me. My choice has been much thesame,--a small circle,
but the first in it. Yet, had I been a man, or had my dear Colonel been a
man whom it was in the power of a woman's art to raise one step higher in
that metaphorical ladder which is not the ladder of the angels, why,
then--what then? No matter! I am contented. I transfer my ambition to
Jane. Do you not think her handsome?"