In her doting thought her Dick would make any woman happy as his wife.

At all events, right or wrong, judicious or otherwise, her scheme must now be adhered to: it was too late to take up with any other.

The vision of its failure had faded away, and she could think the matter out with her usual calmness.
The gray dawn creeping through the shutter-chinks found her thinking still; but ere the dull sounds of awakening life were heard above stairs, and before the coming of the sleepy, slatternly maid to "do the parlor," Mrs.York had arrived at her conclusion.
The early matin prime, she was wont to say, was always her brightest hour, but it found her, on the present occasion, white and worn, not with her long vigil, but because it was "borne in upon her," as poor Joanna used to say, that her son and she must part for his own good: so soon as the spring should come she would bid him go.

London, where all was prudence and constraint, was no place to win the bride she sought for him.

He should go forth into the country, where even heiresses were still girls, and win her, as troubadour of old, but with sketch-book in hand instead of harp.