"
Mrs. Easton made no reply to this, though she listened attentively to it.
She walked to the window and thought quietly to herself; then she came
back again and sat down, and after a pause she said, very gravely,
"Knowing all I know, and seeing all I see, I advise you two to marry at
once by special license, and keep it secret from every one who knows
you--but myself--till a proper time comes to reveal it; and it's borne in
upon me that that time will come before long, even if Colonel Clifford
should not die this bout, which everybody says he will."
"Oh, nurse," said Mary, faintly, "I little thought that you'd be
against me."
"Against you, Miss Mary!" said Mrs. Eastern, with much feeling. "I admire
Mr. Walter very much, as any woman must with eyes in her head, and I love
him for loving of you so truly, and like a man, for it does not become a
man to shilly-shally, but I never saw him till he _was_ a man, but you
are the child I nursed, and prayed over, and trembled for in sickness,
and rejoiced over in health, and left a good master because I saw he did
not love you so well as I did.
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