“No, sir; no more than you did.”

“Because I never observed it till to-day.”

“How could I know that, sir?  Everybody else observed it.  Mr. Hope would have been the first to see it, if he had been in your place.”  This sudden thrust made Bartley wince, and showed him he had a tougher customer to deal with than poor Mary.

“You can’t bear to be found fault with, Easton,” said he, craftily, “and I don’t wonder at it, after fourteen years’ fidelity to me.”

“I take no credit for that,” said the woman, doggedly.  “I have been paid for it.”

“No doubt.  But I don’t always get the thing I pay for.  Then let by-gones be by-gones; but just assist me now to cure the girl of this folly.”

“Sir,” said the woman, firmly, “it is not folly; it is wisest and best for all; and I can’t make up my mind to lift a finger against it.”

“Do you mean to defy me, then?”

“No, sir.  I don’t want to go against you, nor yet against my own conscience, what’s left on’t.  I have seen a pretty while it must come to this, and I have written to my sister Sally.  She keeps a small hotel at the lakes.  She is ready to have me, and I’m not too old to be useful to her.  I’m worth my board.  I’ll go there this very day, if you please.  I’m as true to you as I can be, sir.  For I see by Miss Mary crying so you have spoken to her, and so now she is safe to come to me for comfort; and if she does, I shall take her part, you may be sure, for I love her like my own child.”  Here the dogged voice began to tremble; but she recovered herself, and told him she would go at once to her sister Gilbert, that lived only ten miles off, and next day she would go to the little hotel at the lakes, and leave him to part two true lovers if he could and break both their hearts; she should wash her hands of it.

Bartley asked a moment to consider.

“Shall we be friends still if you leave me like that?  Surely, after all these years, you will not tell your sister?  You will not betray me?”

“Never, sir,” said she.  “What for?  To bring those two together?  Why, it would part them forever.  I wonder at you, a gentleman, and in business all your life, yet you don’t seem to see through the muddy water as I do that is only a plain woman.”

She then told him her clothes were nearly all packed, and she could start in an hour.

“You shall have the break and the horses,” said he, with great alacrity.

Everything transpires quickly in a small house, and just as she had finished packing, in came Mary in violent distress.  “What, is it true?  Are you going to leave me, now my heart is broken?  Oh, nurse! nurse!”

This was too much even for stout-hearted Nancy Easton.

“Oh, my child! my child!” she cried, and sat down on her box sobbing violently, Mary infolded in her arms, and then they sat crying and rocking together.

“Papa does not love me as I do him,” sobbed Mary, turning bitter for the first time.  “He breaks my heart, and sends you away the same day, for fear you should comfort me.”