from him; but so gently that her very gentleness repressed him. "If
never loving another is to be yours,--if to pray for you night and
day as the dearest one of all, is to be yours,--if to remind myself
every hour that all my thoughts are due to you, if to think of you so
that I may console myself with knowing that one so high and so good
has condescended to regard me,--if that is to be yours,--then I am
yours; then shall I surely be yours while I live. But it must be only
with my thoughts, only with my prayers, only with all my heart."

"Marion, Marion!" Now again he was on his knees before her, but
hardly touching her.

"It is your fault, Lord Hampstead," she said, trying to smile. "All
this is your doing, because you would not let a poor girl say simply
what she had to say."

"Nothing of it shall be true,--except that you love me. That is all
that I can remember. That I will repeat to you daily till you have
put your hand in mine, and call yourself my wife."

"That I will never do," she exclaimed, once again standing. "As God
hears me now I will never say it. It would be wrong,--and I will
never say it." In thus protesting she put forth her little hands
clenched fast, and then came again the flush across her brow, and her
eyes for a moment seemed to wander, and then, failing in strength to
carry her through it all, she fell back senseless on the sofa.

Lord Hampstead, finding that he alone could do nothing to aid her,
was forced to ring the bell, and to give her over to the care of the
woman, who did not cease to pray him to depart. "I can't do nothing,
my lord, while you stand over her that way."

CHAPTER XVII.

AT GORSE HALL.

Hampstead, when he was turned out into Paradise Row, walked once or
twice up the street, thinking what he might best do next, regardless
of the eyes at No. 10 and No. 15;--knowing that No. 11 was absent,
where alone he could have found assistance had the inhabitant been
there. As far as he could remember he had never seen a woman faint
before. The way in which she had fallen through from his arms on
to the sofa when he had tried to sustain her, had been dreadful to
him; and almost more dreadful the idea that the stout old woman with
whom he had left her should be more powerful than he to help her.
He walked once or twice up and down, thinking what he had best now
do, while Clara Demijohn was lost in wonder as to what could have
happened at No. 17. It was quite intelligible t