in vain."

"That is mean," he said, angrily. "That is imputing falseness, and
greed, and dishonour to the girl I love. If she has liked some fellow
clerk in her father's office better than she likes me, shall she
accept me merely because I am my father's son?"

"It was not that of which I was thinking. A man may have personal
gifts which will certainly prevail with a girl young and unsullied by
the world, as I suppose is your Marion Fay."

"Bosh," he said, laughing. "As far as personal gifts are concerned,
one fellow is pretty nearly the same as another. A girl has to be
good-looking. A man has got to have something to buy bread and
cheese with. After that it is all a mere matter of liking and
disliking--unless, indeed, people are dishonest, which they very
often are."

Up to this period of his life Lord Hampstead had never met any girl
whom he had thought it desirable to make his wife. It was now two
years since the present Marchioness had endeavoured to arrange an
alliance between him and her own niece, Lady Amaldina Hauteville.
This, though but two years had passed since, seemed to him to have
occurred at a distant period of his life. Very much had occurred to
him during those two years. His political creed had been strengthened
by the convictions of others, especially by those of George Roden,
till it had included those advanced opinions which have been
described. He had annoyed, and then dismayed, his father by his
continued refusal to go into Parliament. He had taken to himself ways
of living of his own, which gave to him the manners and appearance of
more advanced age. At that period, two years since, his stepmother
still conceived high hopes of him, even though he would occasionally
utter in her presence opinions which seemed to be terrible. He was
then not of age, and there would be time enough for a woman of her
tact and intellect to cure all those follies. The best way of curing
them, she thought, would be by arranging a marriage between the heir
to the Marquisate and the daughter of so distinguished a conservative
Peer as her brother-in-law, Lord Persiflage. Having this high object
in view, she opened the matter with diplomatic caution to her sister.
Lady Persiflage had at that moment begun to regard Lord Llwddythlw as
a possible son-in-law, but was alive to the fact that Lord Hampstead
possessed some superior advantages. It was possible that her girl
should really love such a one as Lord Hampstead,--ha