if I please."

"I am not so sure of that," said the tailor. "Evil burs stick fast."

It would be vain now to tell of all the sweet lovers' words that were
spoken between them during those long hours;--but the man believed
that no girl had ever been so true to her lover through so many
difficulties as Lady Anna had been to him, and she was sure that she
had never varied in her wish to become the wife of the man who had
first asked her for her love. She thought much and she thought often
of the young lord; but she took the impress of her lover's mind, and
learned to regard her cousin, the Earl, as an idle, pretty popinjay,
born to eat, to drink, and to carry sweet perfumes. "Just a
butterfly," said the tailor.

"One of the brightest butterflies," said the girl.

"A woman should not be a butterfly,--not altogether a butterfly," he
answered. "But for a man it is surely a contemptible part. Do you
remember the young man who comes to Hotspur on the battlefield, or
him whom the king sent to Hamlet about the wager? When I saw Lord
Lovel at his breakfast table, I thought of them. I said to myself
that spermaceti was the 'sovereignest thing on earth for an inward
wound,' and I told myself that he was of 'very soft society, and
great showing.'" She smiled, though she did not know the words he
quoted, and assured him that her poor cousin Lord Lovel would not
trouble him much in the days that were to come. "He will not trouble
me at all, but as he is your cousin I would fain that he could be a
man. He had a sort of gown on which would have made a grand frock for
you, sweetheart;--only too smart I fear for my wife." She laughed
and was pleased,--and remembered without a shade either of regret
or remorse the manner in which the popinjay had helped her over the
stepping-stones at Bolton Abbey.

But the tailor, though he thus scorned the lord, was quite willing
that a share of the property should be given up to him. "Unless you
did, how on earth could he wear such grand gowns as that? I can
understand that he wants it more than I do, and if there are to be
earls, I suppose they should be rich. We do not want it, my girl."

"You will have half, Daniel," she said.

"As far as that goes, I do not want a doit of it,--not a penny-piece.
When they paid me what became my own by my father's will, I was rich
enough,--rich enough for you and me too, my girl, if that was all.
But it is better that it should be divided. If he had it all he