 day later, would have been of very, very little import.«
    »And who can wonder if it be so, mother?« rejoined the young man; »or why
should I say, if? - It is - it is - you know it, mother - you must know it!«
    »I know that she deserves the best and purest love the heart of man can
offer,« said Mrs. Maylie; »I know that the devotion and affection of her nature
require no ordinary return, but one that shall be deep and lasting. If I did not
feel this, and know, besides, that a changed behaviour in one she loved would
break her heart, I should not feel my task so difficult of performance, or have
to encounter so many struggles in my own bosom, when I take what seems to me to
be the strict line of duty.«
    »This is unkind, mother,« said Harry. »Do you still suppose that I am a boy
ignorant of my own mind, and mistaking the impulses of my own soul?«
    »I think, my dear son,« returned Mrs. Maylie, laying her hand upon his
shoulder, »that youth has many generous impulses which do not last; and that
among them are some, which, being gratified, become only the more fleeting.
Above all, I think,« said the lady, fixing her eyes on her son's face, »that if
an enthusiastic, ardent, and ambitious man marry a wife on whose name there is a
stain, which, though it originate in no fault of hers, may be visited by cold
and sordid people upon her, and upon his children also: and, in exact proportion
to his success in the world, be cast in his teeth, and made the subject of
sneers against him: he may, no matter how generous and good his nature, one day
repent of the connexion he formed in early life. And she may have the pain of
knowing that he does so.«
    »Mother,« said the young man, impatiently, »he would be a selfish brute,
unworthy alike of the name of man and of the woman you describe, who acted
thus.«
    »You think so now, Harry,« replied his mother.
    »And ever will!« said the young man. »The mental agony I have suffered,
during the last two days, wrings from me the avowal to you of a passion which,
as you well know, is not one of yesterday, nor one I have
