scene I had interrupted, but I could not well understand it myself. All

I knew was, that this marriage had been demanded by Lady Catherine as a condition of our remaining in the house. I repeated, word for word, what I had gathered of the conversation between her and Turner, omitting only those expressions of reluctance that had escaped my benefactor. She listened attentively, but being almost a child, like myself, in English custom, could not comprehend why this necessity had arisen for any change in our condition.

“And do you hate Mr. Turner so much?” I said, breaking a fit of thoughtfulness into which she had fallen. “I thought you liked each other till now; don’t, oh, my bonne, don’t marry him if it troubles you so! You and I can get a living somehow without taking him from his place.”

“Yes—two children—why, Zana, you know more of the world than I do. Where could we go?”

“I don’t know, without Mr. Turner, what we should do,” I answered, sadly.

“Without him, why, Zana—without him we should both die!”

“Oh, Maria, my bonne, if you could but like Mr. Turner, only a little, just enough to marry him, you know!” I exclaimed, amid my tears.

“Like him, Zana? I have had nothing but him and you in the world for years,” she said, weeping.

“Then you do like him—you will marry him!” I exclaimed, full of joy.

She strained me to her bosom and kissed me in her old passionate way. I sprang from her arms the moment they were loosened, and ran off in search of Mr. Turner.

He was working in the garden, stamping the earth around a young laburnum tree, which he had just planted, with a sort of ferocious vehemence, as if striving to work away some lingering irritation.

“Go in and speak with her now,” I said, pulling his arm.

“No, I’ve made a fool of myself once, and that is enough!” he answered, shaking me off. “I didn’t think any woman living could have driven me to it.”

Still he moved toward the house.

That evening Mr. Turner was absent both from our cottage and the Hurst. He came back the next day with a portentous-looking paper, which he and Maria scanned over with great interest. When I asked regarding it, they told me, with a good deal of awkwardness, that it was a marriage license.