me from Cronidge to-day?'

'From my family--to you.'

She seemed resentful. His omissions as a correspondent were explicable in
a sentence. It had to be deferred.

Reviewing for a moment the enormous internal conflict undergone by him
during the period of the silence between them, he wondered at the
vastness of the love which had conquered objections, to him so poignant.

There was at least no seeing of the public blot on her birth when looking
on her face. Nor when thinking of the beauty of her character, in absence
or in presence, was there any. He had mastered distaste to such a degree,
that he forgot the assistance he had received from the heiress for
enabling him to appreciate the fair young girl. Money is the imperious
requirement of superior station; and more money and more: in these our
modern days of the merchant's wealth, and the miner's, and the gigantic
American and Australian millionaires, high rank is of necessity vowed, in
peril of utter eclipse; to the possession of money. Still it is, when
assured, a consideration far to the rear with a gentleman in whose bosom
love and the buzzing world have fought their battle out. He could believe
it thoroughly fought out, by the prolonged endurance of a contest lasting
many days and nights; in the midst of which, at one time, the task of
writing to tell her of his withdrawal from the engagement, was the cause
of his omission to write.

As to her character, he dwelt on the charm of her recovered features, to
repress an indicative dread of some intrepid force behind it, that might
be unfeminine, however gentle the external lineaments. Her features, her
present aristocratic deficiency of colour, greatly pleased him; her
character would submit to moulding. Of all young ladies in the world, she
should be the one to shrink from a mental independence and hold to the
guidance of the man ennobling her. Did she? Her eyes were reading him.
She had her father's limpid eyes, and when they concentrated rays, they
shot.

'Have you seen my parents, Mr. Sowerby?'

He answered smilingly, for reassuringly: 'I have seen them.'

'My mother?'

'From your mother first. But am I not to be Dudley?'

'She spoke to you? She told you?'

'And yesterday your father--a second time.'

Some remainder of suspicion in the dealing with members of this family,
urged Dudley to say: 'I understood from them, you were not? . . . that
you were quite . . .?'

'I have heard: I have guessed: it