Philip reddened.  Often as the idea of marriage had come into his mind, this was the first time it had been gravely suggested to him by another.  But he replied quietly enough.

‘I don’t think Hester Rose has any thought of matrimony.’

’To be sure not; it is for thee, or for William Coulson, to make her think.  She, may-be, remembers enough of her mother’s life with her father to make her slow to think on such things.  But it’s in her to think on matrimony; it’s in all of us.’

‘Alice’s husband was dead before I knew her,’ said Philip, rather evading the main subject.

’It was a mercy when he were taken.  A mercy to them who were left, I mean.  Alice was a bonny young woman, with a smile for everybody, when he wed her—­a smile for every one except our John, who never could do enough to try and win one from her.  But, no! she would have none of him, but set her heart on Jack Rose, a sailor in a whale-ship.  And so they were married at last, though all her own folks were against it.  And he was a profligate sinner, and went after other women, and drank, and beat her.  She turned as stiff and as grey as thou seest her now within a year of Hester’s birth.  I believe they’d have perished for want and cold many a time if it had not been for John.  If she ever guessed where the money came from, it must have hurt her pride above a bit, for she was always a proud woman.  But mother’s love is stronger than pride.’

Philip fell to thinking; a generation ago something of the same kind had been going on as that which he was now living through, quick with hopes and fears.  A girl beloved by two—­nay, those two so identical in occupation as he and Kinraid were—­Rose identical even in character with what he knew of the specksioneer; a girl choosing the wrong lover, and suffering and soured all her life in consequence of her youth’s mistake; was that to be Sylvia’s lot?—­or, rather, was she not saved from it by the event of the impressment, and by the course of silence he himself had resolved upon?  Then he went on to wonder if the lives of one generation were but a repetition of the lives of those who had gone before, with no variation but from the internal cause that some had greater capacity for suffering than others.  Would those very circumstances which made the interest of his life now, return, in due cycle, when he was dead and Sylvia was forgotten?

Perplexed thoughts of this and a similar kind kept returning into Philip’s mind whenever he had leisure to give himself up to consideration of anything but the immediate throng of business.  And every time he dwelt on this complication and succession of similar events, he emerged from his reverie more and more satisfied with the course he had taken in withholding from Sylvia all knowledge of her lover’s fate.

It was settled at length that Philip was to remove to the house belonging to the shop, Coulson remaining with Alice and her daughter.  But in the course of the summer the latter told his partner that he had offered marriage to Hester on the previous day, and been refused.  It was an awkward affair altogether, as he lived in their house, and was in daily companionship with Hester, who, however, seemed to preserve her gentle calmness, with only a tinge more of reserve in her manner to Coulson.