eelings, and I have tested
them. That one is a beautiful poet's dream. Mary is a woman, the only
woman I can ever love. Not an hour but I have felt it, and now,
father, what does she mean?'

'She means, poor girl, what only her own scrupulous delicacy could
regard as an objection, but what renders me still more desirous to have
a right to protect her. The cause of our return--'

'How? I thought her father was dead.'

'Far worse. At Valparaiso we met Robson, the confidential agent. I
learnt from him that Mr. Ponsonby had hardly waited for her mother's
death to marry a Limenian, a person whom everything pointed out as
unfit to associate with his daughter. Even Robson, cautious as he was,
said he could not undertake to recommend Miss Ponsonby to continue her
journey.'

'And this was all?' exclaimed Louis, too intent on his own views for
anything but relief.

'All? Is it not enough to set her free? She acquiesced in my judgment
that she could do no otherwise than return. She wrote to her father,
and I sent three lines to inform him that, under the circumstances, I
fulfilled my promise to her mother by taking her home. I had nearly
made her promise that, should we find you about to form an
establishment of your own, she would consider herself as my child;
but--'

'Oh, father! how shall we make her believe you care nothing for her
scruple? The wretched man! But--oh! where is she?'

'It does not amount to a scruple in her case,' deliberately resumed the
Earl. 'I always knew what Ponsonby was, and nothing from him could
surprise me--even such an outrage on feeling and decency. Besides, he
has effectually shut himself out of society, and degraded himself
beyond the power of interfering with you. For the rest, Mary is
already, in feeling, so entirely my child, that to have the right to
call her so has always been my fondest wish. And, Louis, the months I
have spent with her have not diminished my regard. My Mary! she will
have a happier lot than her mother!'

The end of the speech rewarded Louis for the conflict by which he had
kept himself still to listen to the beginning. Lord Ormersfield had
pity on him, and went in search of Mary; while he, remembering former
passages, felt that his father might be less startling and more
persuasive, but began to understand what James must have suffered in
committing his affairs to another.

The Earl found Mary in what had been her mother's sitting-room,
strivi