ould always love you."

"It might be very hard:--and if once felt to be hard, then
impossible. You have not looked at it as I have done. Why should you?
Even with a wife that was a trouble to you--"

"Oh, Isabel!"

His arm was now round her waist, but she continued speaking as though
she were not aware of the embrace. "Yes, a trouble! I shall not be
always just what I am now. Now I can be bright and pretty and hold my
own with others because I am so. But are you sure,--I am not,--that I
am such stuff as an English lady should be made of? If in ten years'
time you found that others did not think so,--that, worse again, you
did not think so yourself, would you be true to me then?"

"I will always be true to you."

She gently extricated herself, as though she had done so that she
might better turn round and look into his face. "Oh, my own one, who
can say of himself that it would be so? How could it be so, when you
would have all the world against you? You would still be what you
are,--with a clog round your leg while at home. In Parliament, among
your friends, at your clubs, you would be just what you are. You
would be that Lord Silverbridge who had all good things at his
disposal,--except that he had been unfortunate in his marriage! But
what should I be?" Though she paused he could not answer her,--not
yet. There was a solemnity in her speech which made it necessary that
he should hear her to the end. "I, too, have my friends in my own
country. It is no disgrace to me there that my grandfather worked on
the quays. No one holds her head higher than I do, or is more sure
of being able to hold it. I have there that assurance of esteem and
honour which you have here. I would lose it all to do you a good. But
I will not lose it to do you an injury."

"I don't know about injuries," he said, getting up and walking about
the room. "But I am sure of this. You will have to be my wife."

"If your father will take me by the hand and say that I shall be his
daughter, I will risk all the rest. Even then it might not be wise;
but we love each other too well not to run some peril. Do you think
that I want anything better than to preside in your home, to soften
your cares, to welcome your joys, to be the mother perhaps of your
children, and to know that you are proud that I should be so? No, my
darling. I can see a Paradise;--only, only, I may not be fit to enter
it. I must use some judgment better than my own, sounder, dear, th