h, I do hate that form of address. My name is John. Because of
certain conventional arrangements the outside people call me Lord
Hampstead."

"It is because I can be to you no more than one of the outside people
that I call you--my lord."

"Marion!"

"Only one of the outside people;--no more, though my gratitude to
you, my appreciation, my friendship for you may be ever so strong.
My father's daughter must be just one of the outside people to Lord
Hampstead,--and no more."

"Why so? Why do you say it? Why do you torment me? Why do you banish
me at once, and tell me that I must go home a wretched, miserable
man? Why?--why?--why?

"Because, my lord--"

"I can give a reason,--a good reason,--a reason which I cannot
oppose, though it must be fatal to me unless I can remove it; a
reason to which I must succumb if necessary, but to which, Marion,
I will not succumb at once. If you say that you cannot love me that
will be a reason."

If it were necessary that she should tell him a lie, she must do so.
It would have been pleasant if she could have made him understand
that she would be content to love him on condition that he would be
content to leave her. That she should continue to love him, and that
he should cease to love her,--unless, perhaps, just a little,--that
had been a scheme for the future which had recommended itself to her.
There should be a something left which should give a romance to her
life, but which should leave him free in all things. It had been a
dream, in which she had much trusted, but which, while she listened
to the violence of his words, she acknowledged to herself to be
almost impossible. She must tell the lie;--but at the moment it
seemed to her that there might be a middle course. "I dare not love
you," she said.

"Dare not love me, Marion? Who hinders you? Who tells you that you
may not? Is it your father?"

"No, my lord, no."

"It is Mrs. Roden."

"No, my lord. This is a matter in which I could obey no friend, no
father. I have had to ask myself, and I have told myself that I do
not dare to love above my station in life."

"I am to have that bugbear again between me and my happiness?"

"Between that and your immediate wishes;--yes. Is it not so in all
things? If I,--even I,--had set my heart upon some one below me,
would not you, as my friend, have bade me conquer the feeling?"

"I have set my heart on one whom in the things of the world I regard
as my equal,--in all other t