"She does not want to marry him," said Mrs. Yorke; "if she had she could
have done it long ago."

"Not while I lived," said Mr. Yorke, firmly. But from this time Mr.
Yorke began to acquiesce in his wife's plans touching Mr. Lancaster.

Finally Alice herself began to yield. The influences were very strong,
and were skilfully exerted. The only man who had ever made any lasting
impression on her heart was, she felt, out of the question. The young
school-teacher, with his pride and his scorn of modern ways, had
influenced her life more than any one else she had ever known, and
though under her mother's management the feeling had gradually subsided,
and had been merged into what was merely a cherished recollection,
Memory, stirred at times by some picture or story of heroism and
devotion, reminded her that she too might, under other conditions, have
had a real romance. Still, after two or three years, her life appeared
to have been made for her by Fate, and she yielded, not recognizing that
Fate was only a very ambitious and somewhat short-sighted mamma aided by
the conditions of an artificial state of life known as fashionable
society.

Keith wrote Alice Yorke a letter congratulating her upon her safe
return; but a feeling, part shyness, part pride, seized him. He had
received no acknowledgment of his last letter. Why should he write
again? He mailed the letter in the waste-basket. Now, however, that
success had come to him, he wrote her a brief note congratulating her
upon her return, a stiff little plea for remembrance. He spoke of his
good fortune: he was the agent for the most valuable lands in that
region, and the future was beginning to look very bright. Business, he
said, might take him North before long, and the humming-birds would show