ful and most distressing circumstances. It is better I should
speak now, my lord, than at a future day. My father's mind has been
seized by an unaccountable ambition to see me your wife. This preyed
upon him so severely that he became dangerously ill." Here, however,
from delicacy to the baronet, she checked herself, but added, "Yes, my
lord, I have consented; but, understand me--you have not my affections."

"Why, as to that, Miss Gourlay, I have myself peculiar opinions; and I
am glad that they avail me here. You will think it odd, now, that I
had made my mind up never to marry a woman who loved me. This is really
fortunate."

"I don't understand you, my lord."

"Well, I suppose you don't; but I shall make myself intelligible as well
as I can. Love before marriage, in my opinion, is exceedingly dangerous
to future happiness; and I will tell you why I think so. In the first
place, a great deal of that fuel which feeds the post-matrimonial flame
is burned away and wasted unnecessarily; the imagination, too, is raised
to a ridiculous and most enthusiastic expectation of perpetual bliss
and ecstasy; then comes disappointment, coolness, indifference, and
the lights go out for want of the fuel I mentioned; and altogether the
domestic life becomes rather a dull and tedious affair. The wife wonders
that the husband is no longer a, lover; and the husband cannot for the
soul of him see all the--the--the--ahem!--I scarcely know what to call
them--that enchanted him before marriage. Then, you perceive, that when
love is necessary, the fact comes out that it was most injudiciously
expended before the day of necessity. Both parties feel, in fact,
that the property has been prematurely squandered--like many another
property--and when it is wanted, there is nothing to fall back upon.
I wish to God affection could be funded, so that when a married couple
found themselves low in pocket in that commodity they could draw the
interest or sell out at once."

"And what can you expect, my lord, from those who marry without
affection?" asked Lucy.

"Ten chances for happiness," replied his lordship, "for one that results
from love. When such persons meet, mark you, Miss Gourlay, they are not
enveloped in an artificial veil of splendor, which the cares of life,
and occasionally a better knowledge of each other, cause to dissolve
from about them, leaving them stripped of those imaginary qualities of
mind and person which never had any exist