t any cause assigned."

"You will not hear my reasons,"--she was still kneeling before him
and looking up into his face.

"I will hear them if you will tell me that they refer to any supposed
faults of my own."

"No, no, no!"

"Then I will not hear them. It is for me to find out your faults, and
when I have found out any that require complaint, I will come and
make it. Dear Alice, I wish you knew how I long for you." Then he put
his hand upon her hair, as though he would caress her.

But this she would not suffer, so she rose slowly, and stood with her
hand upon the table in the middle of the room. "Mr Grey--" she said.

"If you will call me so, I shall think it only a part of your
malady."

"Mr Grey," she continued, "I can only hope that you will take me at
my word."

"Oh, but I will not; certainly I will not, if that would be adverse
to my own interests."

"I am thinking of your interests; I am, indeed;--at any rate as much
as of my own. I feel quite sure that I should not make you happy as
your wife,--quite sure; and feeling that, I think that I am right,
even after all that has passed, to ask your forgiveness, and to beg
that our engagement may be over."

"No, Alice, no; never with my consent. I cannot tell you with what
contentment I would marry you to-morrow,--to-morrow, or next month,
or the month after. But if it cannot be so, then I will wait. Nothing
but your marriage with some one else would convince me."

"I cannot convince you in that way," she said, smiling.

"You will convince me in no other. You have not spoken to your father
of this as yet?"

"Not as yet."

"Do not do so, at any rate for the present. You will own that it
might be possible that you would have to unsay what you had said."

"No; it is not possible."

"Give yourself and me the chance. It can do no harm. And, Alice, I
ask you now for no reasons. I will not ask your reasons, or even
listen to them, because I do not believe that they will long have
effect even on yourself. Do you still think of going to Cheltenham?"

"I have decided nothing as yet."

"If I were you, I would go. I think a change of air would be good for
you."

"Yes; you treat me as though I were partly silly, and partly insane;
but it is not so. The change you speak of should be in my nature, and
in yours."

He shook his head and still smiled. There was something in the
imperturbed security of his manner which almost made her angry with
him. It seem