as Marion
Fay should be a fitting wife for such a one as Lord Hampstead?
Marion Fay had undoubtedly great gifts of her own. She was beautiful,
intelligent, sweet-minded, and possessed of natural delicacy,--so
much so that to Mrs. Roden herself she had become as dear almost as
a daughter; but it was impossible that she should have either the
education or the manners fit for the wife of a great English peer.
Though her manners might be good and her education excellent, they
were not those required for that special position. And then there was
cause for other fears. Marion's mother and brothers and sisters had
all died young. The girl herself had hitherto seemed to escape the
scourge under which they perished. But occasionally there would rise
to her cheeks a bright colour, which for the moment would cause Mrs.
Roden's heart to sink within her. Occasionally there would be heard
from her not a cough, but that little preparation for coughing which
has become so painfully familiar to the ears of those whose fate
it has been to see their beloved ones gradually fade from presumed
health. She had already found herself constrained to say a word or
two to the old Quaker, not telling him that she feared any coming
evil, but hinting that change of air would certainly be beneficial
to such a one as Marion. Acting under this impulse, he had taken her
during the inclemency of the past spring to the Isle of Wight. She
was minded gradually to go on with this counsel, so as if possible
to induce the father to send his girl out of London for some
considerable portion of the year. If this were so, how could she
possibly encourage Lord Hampstead in his desire to make Marion his
wife?

And then, as to the girl herself, could it be for her happiness that
she should be thus lifted into a strange world, a world that would
be hard and ungracious to her, and in which it might be only too
probable that the young lord should see her defects when it would be
too late for either of them to remedy the evil that had been done?
She had thought something of all this before, having recognized the
possibility of such a step as this after what she had seen at Hendon
Hall. She had told herself that it would be well at any rate to
discourage any such idea in Marion's heart, and had spoken jokingly
of the gallantry of men of rank. Marion had smiled sweetly as she
had listened to her friend's words, and had at once said that such
manners were at any rate prett