“We are strange creatures,” said Edward, smiling.  “If we can only put out of sight anything which troubles us, we fancy at once we have got rid of it.  We can give up much in the large and general; but to make sacrifices in little things is a demand to which we are rarely equal.  So it was with my mother,—­as long as I lived with her, while a boy and a young man, she could not bear to let me be a moment out of her sight.  If I was out later than usual in my ride, some misfortune must have happened to me.  If I got wet through in a shower, a fever was inevitable.  I traveled; I was absent from her altogether; and, at once, I scarcely seemed to belong to her.  If we look at it closer,” he continued, “we are both acting very foolishly, very culpably.  Two very noble natures, both of which have the closest claims on our affection, we are leaving exposed to pain and distress, merely to avoid exposing ourselves to a chance of danger.  If this is not to be called selfish, what is?  You take Ottilie.  Let me have the Captain; and, for a short period, at least, let the trial be made.”

“We might venture it,” said Charlotte, thoughtfully, “if the danger were only to ourselves.  But do you think it prudent to bring Ottilie and the Captain into a situation where they must necessarily be so closely intimate; the Captain, a man no older than yourself, of an age (I am not saying this to flatter you) when a man becomes first capable of love and first deserving of it, and a girl of Ottilie’s attractiveness?”

“I cannot conceive how you can rate Ottilie so high,” replied Edward.  “I can only explain it to myself by supposing her to have inherited your affection for her mother.  Pretty she is, no doubt.  I remember the Captain observing it to me, when we came back last year, and met her at your aunt’s.  Attractive she is,—­she has particularly pretty eyes; but I do not know that she made the slightest impression upon me.”

“That was quite proper in you,” said Charlotte, “seeing that I was there; and, although she is much younger than I, the presence of your old friend had so many charms for you, that you overlooked the promise of the opening beauty.  It is one of your ways; and that is one reason why it is so pleasant to live with you.”

Charlotte, openly as she appeared to be speaking, was keeping back something, nevertheless; which was that at the time when Edward came first back from abroad, she had purposely thrown Ottilie in his way, to secure, if possible, so desirable a match for her protegee.  For of herself, at that time, in connection with Edward, she never thought at all.  The Captain, also, had a hint given to him to draw Edward’s attention to her; but the latter, who was clinging determinately to his early affection for Charlotte, looked neither right nor left, and was only happy in the feeling that it was at last within his power to obtain for himself the one happiness which he so earnestly desired; and which a series of incidents had appeared to have placed forever beyond his reach.