that I should take any part in it?"

She remained silent, for some moments before she answered him,
thinking,--striving to think, how best she might do him pleasure.
"What part?" she said at last.

"A man's part, and a son's part. Shall I see these lawyers and learn
from them what they are at? Have I your leave to tell them that you
want no subterfuge, no legal quibbles,--that you stand firmly on your
own clear innocence, and that you defy your enemies to sully it?
Mother, those who have sent you to such men as that cunning attorney
have sent you wrong,--have counselled you wrong."

"It cannot be changed now, Lucius."

"It can be changed, if you will tell me to change it."

And then again she paused. Ah, think of her anguish as she sought for
words to answer him! "No, Lucius," she said, "it cannot be changed
now."

"So be it, mother; I will not ask again," and then he moodily
returned to his books, while she returned to her thoughts. Ah, think
of her misery!

CHAPTER LIV

TELLING ALL THAT HAPPENED BENEATH THE LAMP-POST

When Felix Graham left Noningsby and made his way up to London, he
came at least to one resolution which he intended to be an abiding
one. That idea of a marriage with a moulded wife should at any rate
be abandoned. Whether it might be his great destiny to be the husband
of Madeline Staveley, or whether he might fail in achieving this
purpose, he declared to himself that it would be impossible that he
should ever now become the husband of Mary Snow. And the ease with
which his conscience settled itself on this matter as soon as he had
received from the judge that gleam of hope astonished even himself.
He immediately declared to himself that he could not marry Mary Snow
without perjury! How could he stand with her before the altar and
swear that he would love her, seeing that he did not love her at
all,--seeing that he altogether loved some one else? He acknowledged
that he had made an ass of himself in this affair of Mary Snow. This
moulding of a wife had failed with him, he said, as it always must
fail with every man. But he would not carry his folly further.
He would go to Mary Snow, tell her the truth, and then bear
whatever injury her angry father might be able to inflict on him.
Independently of that angry father he would of course do for Mary
Snow all that his circumstances would admit.

Perhaps the gentleman of a poetic turn of mind whom Mary had
consented to meet beneath the