51�Թ�

Trothplight was one thing, official betrothal another.

It was not surprising that he should enter some protest against any but a spontaneous cancelling of Gwen's trothplight.

But in whatever sense Thornton and Maisie were trothplight, her father opposed their marriage, although it would no doubt have been a social elevation for the miller's daughter.

It was striking her that if a trothplight were nothing but a sort of civil contract—civil in the sense of courteous, polite, urbane, accommodating—an exchange of letters through a callous Post Office—a woman might be engaged a dozen times and meet the males implicated in after-life, without turning a hair.

I know it, I know he loves me much, John; but he has promised me to the Stanleys, and when I told him of our trothplight he laughed, and said he was doing it all for the best.