ve had no doubt about the matter."

"There is an excuse for them which I thought you had not. I am an
altered man, Margaret--you cannot conceive how altered since I began to
know you. They judged of me by what I was once... We will not say how
lately."

"I assure you I do not forget the accounts you used to give of
yourself."

"What accounts?"

"Of how you found life pleasant enough without philosophy and without
anything to do... and other wise sayings of the kind."

"It is by such things that those who knew me long ago have judged me
lately--a retribution which I ought not to complain of. If they
believed me fickle, idle, selfish, it is all fair. Oh! Margaret, men
know nothing of morals till they know women."

"Are you serious?"

"I am solemnly persuaded of it. Happy they who grow up beside mothers
and sisters whom they can revere! But for this, almost all men would be
without earnestness of heart--without a moral purpose--without
generosity, while they are all the while talking of honour. It was so
with me before I knew you. I am feeble enough, and selfish enough yet,
God knows! but I hope still to prove that you have made a man of me, out
of a light, selfish... But what right have I, you may think, to ask you
to rely upon me, when I have so lately been what I tell you. I did not
mean to ask you yet. This very morning, nothing could be further from
my intentions. I do not know how long I should have waited before I
should have dared. My sister has rendered me an inestimable service
amidst all the mischief she did me. I thank her. Ah! Margaret, you
smile!"

Margaret smiled again. The smile owned that she was thinking the same
thing about their obligations to Mrs Rowland.

"Whatever you might have said to me this evening," continued Philip, "if
your regard for me had proved to have been quite overthrown--if you had
continued to despise me, as you must have done at times--I should still
have blessed you, all my life--I should have worshipped you, as the
being who opened a new world to me. You lifted me out of a life of
trifling--of trifling which I thought very elegant at the time--trifling
with my own time and faculties--trifling with other people's serious
business--trifling with something more serious still, I fear--with their
feelings. As far as I remember, I thought all this manly and refined
enough: and but for you, I should have thought so still. You early
opened my eyes to all t