of the tree and towards a walk
to the right, which led for a short distance along the margin of the
lake, backed by the interlaced boughs of a thick copse.

"Sir!" said the young man, speaking first, and with a visible effort,
"your cautions have been in vain! I love this girl--this daughter of the
haughty Beauforts! I love her--better than life I love her!"

"My poor boy," said the uncle tenderly, and with a simple fondness
passing his arm over the speaker's shoulder, "do not think I can chide
you--I know what it is to love in vain!"

"In vain!--but why in vain?" exclaimed the younger Spencer, with a
vehemence that had in it something of both agony and fierceness. "She
may love me--she shall love me!" and almost for the first time in his
life, the proud consciousness of his rare gifts of person spoke in his
kindled eye and dilated stature. "Do they not say that Nature has been
favourable to me?--What rival have I here?--Is she not young?--And
(sinking his voice till it almost breathed like music) is not love
contagious?"

"I do not doubt that she may love you--who would not?--but--but--the
parents, will they ever consent?"

"Nay!" answered the lover, as with that inconsistency common to passion,
he now argued stubbornly against those fears in another to which he had
just before yielded in himself,--"Nay!--after all, am I not of their own
blood?--Do I not come from the elder branch?--Was I not reared in equal
luxury and with higher hopes?--And my mother--my poor mother--did
she not to the last maintain our birthright--her own honour?--Has not
accident or law unjustly stripped us of our true station?--Is it not for
us to forgive spoliation?--Am I not, in fact, the person who descends,
who forgets the wrongs of the dead--the heritage of the living?"

The young man had never yet assumed this tone--had never yet shown that
he looked back to the history connected with his birth with the feelings
of resentment and the remembrance of wrong. It was a tone contrary
to his habitual calm and contentment--it struck forcibly on his
listener--and the elder Spencer was silent for some moments before he
replied, "If you feel thus (and it is natural), you have yet stronger
reason to struggle against this unhappy affection."

"I have been conscious of that, sir," replied the young man, mournfully.
"I have struggled!--and I say again it is in vain! I turn, then, to face
the obstacles! My birth--let us suppose that the Beauforts ove