THERE IS NO HURRY. 163

the best a man could possess; after some delay,
and much consideration of the matter, he told
his son that he really could not consent to his
marriage with a penniless bride. And Dr.
Adams, finding that the old gentleman, with a
total want of that delicacy which moneyed men
do not frequently possess, had spoken of what
he termed too truly and too strongly his ‘ heart-
less’? want of forethought, and characterised as
a selfishness the indulgence of a love for dis-
play and extravagance, when children were to
be placed in the world and portioned—insulted
the son for the fault of the father, and forbade
his daughter to receive him.

Mary Adams endeavoured to bear this as
meekly as she had borne the flattery and the
tenderness which had been Javished on her since
ner birth. The bitter, bitter knowledge that
she was considered by her lover’s family as a
girl who, with the chance of being penniless,
lived like a princess, was inconceivably galling ;
and though she had dismissed her lover, and
knew that her father had insulted him, still she
wondered how he could so soon forget her, and
never write even a line of farewell. From her
mother she did not expect sympathy; she was
too tender and too proud to seek it; and her
father, more occupied than ever, was seldom in
his own house. Her uncle, who had not been in
town for some years, at last arrived, and was not
less struck by the extreme grace and beauty of