Then you refuse absolutely?" he asked, and though his voice quivered
still, it was no longer from tenderness. He hated stubbornness, and,
most of all, he hated it in the woman who was going to be his wife. A
life of continual contradiction, he felt, would be intolerable. A strong
will, which he had always admired in himself, became a positive failing
in Gabriella. A woman's strength lay, after all, not in force of
character, but in sweetness of nature. And yet how lovely she was! How
soft, how sweet she looked as she gazed up at him with her radiant eyes.
There was a fascination for him in her tall slenderness, in the graceful
curve of her head, which drooped slightly like a dark flower on its
stem. Everything about her charmed him, and yet he had never called her
beautiful in his thoughts.

"I told you how it was, dear, when you first asked me to marry you," she
said, with infinite patience. "I told you that it wasn't fair to ask you
to take mother, but that I couldn't possibly leave her alone in her old
age. Jane's home is wretchedly unhappy--she can never tell when Charley
is to be counted on--and it would kill mother to be dependent on Charley
even if he were willing. I see your side, George, indeed, indeed, I do,
but I can't--I simply can't act differently. I have always known it was
my duty to look after mother--nothing can change that, not even love.
She worked for us while we were little, and it is trouble that has made
her what she is to-day. You must see that I am right, George; you can't
possibly help it."

But he couldn't see it. If the truth had been twice as evident, if
Gabriella had been twice as reasonable, he could still have seen only
his wishes.

"I am only asking you to do what is best for us both, Gabriella."

"But how can it be best for me to become an ungrateful child, George?"

Neither of them wanted to quarrel, yet in a minute the barbed words were
flying between them; in a minute they faced each other as coldly as if
they had been strangers instead of a

Martha Finley (1828 - 1909) was a teacher and author of numerous works, the most well known being the 28 volume Elsie Dinsmore series which was published over a span of 38 years. The daughter of Presbyterian minister Dr. James Brown Finley and his wife and cousin Maria Theresa Brown Finley, she was born on April 26th, 1828 in Chillicothe, Ohio. Finley wrote many of her books under the psodonym Martha Farquharson. She died in 1909 in Elkton, Maryland, where she moved in 1876.

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