e tells them."

"And why don't you, dear, do exactly what he tells you?"

"Ah,--that is another question. I should do many things if he told
me. He is the head of our family. I think he ought to have all this
money, and be a rich great man, as the Earl Lovel should be."

"And yet you won't be his wife?"

"Would you,--if you had promised another man?"

"Have you promised another man?"

"Yes;--I have."

"Who is he, Lady Anna?"

"They have not told you, then?"

"No;--nobody has told me. I know they all want you to marry Lord
Lovel,--and I know he wants it. I know he is quite in love with you."

"Ah;--I do not think that. But if he were, it could make no
difference. If you had once given your word to another man, would you
go back because a lord asked you?"

"I don't think I would ever give my word without asking mamma."

"If he had been good to you, and you had loved him always, and he had
been your best friend,--what would you do then?"

"Who is he, Lady Anna?"

"Do not call me Lady Anna, or I shall not like you. I will tell you,
but you must not say that I told you. Only I thought everybody knew.
I told Lord Lovel, and he, I think, has told all the world. It is Mr.
Daniel Thwaite."

"Mr. Daniel Thwaite!" said Alice, who had heard enough of the case to
know who the Thwaites were. "He is a tailor!"

"Yes," said Lady Anna proudly; "he is a tailor."

"Surely that cannot be good," said Alice, who, having long since felt
what it was to be the daughter of a serjeant, had made up her mind
that she would marry nothing lower than a barrister.

"It is what you call bad, I dare say."

"I don't think a tailor can be a gentleman."

"I don't know. Perhaps I wasn't a lady when I promised him. But I
did promise. You can never know what he and his father did for us.
I think we should have died only for them. You don't know how we
lived;--in a little cottage, with hardly any money, with nobody to
come near us but they. Everybody else thought that we were vile and
wicked. It is true. But they always were good to us. Would not you
have loved him?"

"I should have loved him in a kind of way."

"When one takes so much, one must give in return what one has to
give," said Lady Anna.

"Do you love him still?"

"Of course I love him."

"And you wish to be his wife?"

"Sometimes I think I don't. It is not that I am ashamed for myself.
What would it have signified if I had gone away with him straight
from Cumberla