This marriage must not come off.

It was contrary to almost every instinct of one who was practical not only by character, but by habit of life and training.

Her warm and full-blooded nature had a sneaking sympathy with love and pleasure, and had she not been practical, she might have found this side of her a serious drawback to the main tenor of a life so much in view of the public eye.

Her consciousness of this danger in her own case made her extremely alive to the risks of an undesirable connection--especially if it were a marriage--to any public man.

At the same time the mother-heart in her was stirred.