er. 'Dearest Marion, I am
yours, and you are mine. Always believe me ever thine.' I don't know
how to go beyond that. When a man is married, and can write about
the children, or the leg of mutton, or what's to be done with his
hunters, then I dare say it becomes easy. Good-bye dearest. Good-bye,
Mrs. Roden. I wish I could keep on calling you Duchess in revenge for
all the 'my lordings.'" Then he left them.

There was a feeling in the mind of both of them that he had conducted
himself just as a man would do who was in a high good-humour at
having been permanently accepted by the girl to whom he had offered
his hand. Marion Fay knew that it was not so;--knew that it never
could be so. Mrs. Roden knew that it had not been so when she had
left home, now nearly two months since; and knew also that Marion had
pledged herself that it should not be so. The young lord then had
been too strong with his love. A feeling of regret came over her as
she remembered that the reasons against such a marriage were still
as strong as ever. But yet how natural that it should be so! Was
it possible that such a lover as Lord Hampstead should not succeed
in his love if he were constant to it himself? Sorrow must come of
it,--perhaps a tragedy so bitter that she could hardly bring herself
to think of it. And Marion had been so firm in her resolve that it
should not be so. But yet it was natural, and she could not bring
herself to express to the girl either anger or disappointment. "Is it
to be?" she said, putting on her sweetest smile.

"No!" said Marion, standing up suddenly,--by no means smiling as she
spoke! "It is not to be. Why do you look at me like that, Mrs. Roden?
Did I not tell you before you went that it should never be so?"

"But he treats you as though he were engaged to you?"

"How can I help it? What can I do to prevent it? When I bid him go,
he still comes back again, and when I tell him that I can never be
his wife he will not believe me. He knows that I love him."

"You have told him that?"

"Told him! He wanted no telling. Of course he knew it. Love him! Oh,
Mrs. Roden, if I could die for him, and so have done with it! And
yet I would not wish to leave my dear father. What am I to do, Mrs.
Roden?"

"But it seemed to me just now that you were so happy with him."

"I am never happy with him;--but yet I am as though I were in
heaven."

"Marion!"

"I am never happy. I know that it cannot be, that it will not be, as
h