only now proved, must be utterly uprooted. And knowing that, she
wept.

Sin was too surely sorrow, though it neared her only in imagination.
In a few weeks she seemed to have almost outgrown girlhood; her
steps were measured, her smile was seldom and lacked mirth. The
revelation would have done so much; the added and growing trouble of
Mutimer's attentions threatened to sink her in melancholy. She would
not allow it to be seen more than she could help; cheerful activity
in the life of home was one of her moral duties, and she strove hard
to sustain it. It was a relief to find herself alone each night,
alone with her sickness of heart.

The repugnance aroused in her by the thought of becoming Mutimer's
wife was rather instinctive than reasoned. From one point of view,
indeed, she deemed it wrong, since it might be entirely the fruit of
the love she was forbidden to cherish. Striving to read her
conscience, which for years had been with her a daily task and was
now become the anguish of every hour, she found it hard to establish
valid reasons for steadfastly refusing a man who was her mother's
choice. She read over the marriage service frequently. There stood
the promise--to love, to honour, and to obey. Honour and obedience
she might render him, but what of love? The question arose, what did
love mean? Could there be such a thing as love of an unworthy
object? Was she not led astray by the spirit of perverseness which
was her heritage?

Adela could not bring herself to believe that 'to love' in the sense
of the marriage service and to 'be in love' as her heart understood
it were one and the same thing. The Puritanism of her training led