n we are alone together, now; and yet I feel
that I have no right."

"You have every right. You shall have every right if you will accept
it. Lady Mason, I am an old man,--some would say a very old man. But
I am not too old to love you. Can, you accept the love of an old man
like me?"

Lady Mason was, as we are aware, not taken in the least by surprise;
but it was quite necessary that she should seem to be so taken. This
is a little artifice which is excusable in almost any lady at such
a period. "Sir Peregrine," she said, "you do not mean more than the
love of a most valued friend?"

"Yes, much more. I mean the love of a husband for his wife; of a wife
for her husband."

"Sir Peregrine! Ah me! You have not thought of this, my friend. You
have not remembered the position in which I am placed. Dearest,
dearest friend; dearest of all friends,"--and then she knelt before
him, leaning on his knees, as he sat in his accustomed large
arm-chair. "It may not be so. Think of the sorrow that would come to
you and yours, if my enemies should prevail."

"By ---- they shall not prevail!" swore Sir Peregrine, roundly; and
as he swore the oath he put his two hands upon her shoulders.

"No; we will hope not. I should die here at your feet if I thought
that they could prevail. But I should die twenty deaths were I to
drag you with me into disgrace. There will be disgrace even in
standing at that bar."

"Who will dare to say so, when I shall stand there with you?" said
Sir Peregrine.

There was a feeling expressed in his face as he spoke these words,
which made it glorious, and bright, and beautiful. She, with her eyes
laden with tears, could not see it; but nevertheless, she knew that
it was bright and beautiful. And his voice was full of hot eager
assurance,--that assurance which had the power to convey itself from
one breast to another. Would it not be so? If he stood there with her
as her husband and lord, would it not be the case that no one would
dare to impute disgrace to her?

And yet she did not wish it. Even yet, thinking of all this as she
did think of it, according to the truth of the argument which he
himself put before her, she would still have preferred that it should
not be so. If she only knew with what words to tell him so;--to tell
him so and yet give no offence! For herself, she would have married
him willingly. Why should she not? Nay, she could and would have
loved him, and been to him a wife, such as h