upon her, but
she had not been able to bring her mind to it.

"I should show myself his inferior if I could deliberately hurt him,"
she cried, with feeling. The trouble of a long debate she had been
having with herself, her uncertainty what to feel or think, gave more
emotion to her voice than she supposed.

"My dear daughter!" cried the father, with evident agitation.

Sophia instantly knew on what suspicion this sudden sympathy was
bestowed. She was too indignant to deny the charge.

"Well, papa?"

"He is, no doubt, a worthy man; but"--he got no help from his daughter;
she was walking beside him with imperious mien--"in short, my dear, I
hope--indeed, if I could think that, under false pretences, he could
have won--"

"He is the last man to seek to win anything under a false pretence." The
coldness of her manner but thinly veiled her vehemence; but even in that
vehemence she perceived that what proofs of her assertion she could
bring would savour of too particular a recollection. She let it stand
unproved.

"My dear child!" he cried, in affectionate distress, "I know that you
will not forget that rank, birth--" He looked at her, and, seeing that
she appeared intractable, exclaimed further, "It's no new thing that
ladies should, in a fit of madness, demean themselves--young ladies
frequently marry grooms; but, believe me, my dear Sophia"--earnestly--"no
happiness ever came of such a thing--only misery, and vice, and squalor."

But here she laughed with irresistible mirth. "Young women who elope
with grooms are not likely to have much basis of happiness in
themselves. And you think me capable of fancying love for a man without
education or refinement, a man with whom I could have nothing in common
that would last beyond a day! What have I ever done, papa, that you
should bring such, an accusation?"

"I certainly beg your pardon, my daughter, if I have maligned you."

"You _have_ maligned me; there is no 'if' about it."

"My dear, I certainly apologise. I thought, from the way in which you
spoke--"

"You thought I was expressing too warm a regard for Mr. Alec Trenholme;
but that has nothing whatever to do with what you have just been talking
about; for, if he were a groom, if he chose to sweep the streets, he
would be as far removed from the kind of man you have just had in your
mind as you and I are; and, if he were not I could take no interest in
him."

The gloom on Captain Rexford's brow, which had b