She won all hearts in her cradle--the little witch. I remember
very well how she used to keep me from my work, by curling her rose leaf
of a hand around one of my rough fingers, before she could talk."
"But why--loving her--should he wish to marry her against her will?"
"We do not know that it is against her will. That is to say, I know
nothing of the kind, and I have no reason even to think it."
There was a silence after this. Paul Colbert was suddenly realizing that
he also had no reason to think her unwilling; but this did not comfort
him or change his feeling. It is the delight and misery of love never to
have anything to do with reason.
"It is not likely that Alston would approve anything that he did not
believe was for her happiness," Father Orin went on after a brief
silence. "But there may have been other inducements. With the judge's
nephew under his thumb, he need not have much fear of the law or the
court. That was the reason most generally assigned for his patronage of
William Pressley in the first place, before there was any engagement
between the young man and Ruth.
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