an't afford to marry you, you know."

"I don't know anything about it. Perhaps we must wait ever so
long;--five years. That's nobody's business but my own."

"I found it all out;--didn't I?"

"Yes;--you found it out."

"I'm thinking of that sly old dame Greystock at Bobsborough,--sending
you here!" Neither on that nor on the two following days did Lady
Linlithgow say a word further to Lucy about her engagement.

CHAPTER XXXV

Too Bad for Sympathy

When Frank Greystock left Bobsborough to go to Scotland, he had not
said that he would return, nor had he at that time made up his mind
whether he would do so or no. He had promised to go and shoot in
Norfolk, and had half undertaken to be up in London with Herriot,
working. Though it was holiday-time, still there was plenty of work
for him to do,--various heavy cases to get up, and papers to be read,
if only he could settle himself down to the doing of it. But the
scenes down in Scotland had been of a nature to make him unfit for
steady labour. How was he to sail his bark through the rocks by which
his present voyage was rendered so dangerous? Of course, to the
reader, the way to do so seems to be clear enough. To work hard at
his profession; to explain to his cousin that she had altogether
mistaken his feelings; and to be true to Lucy Morris was so
manifestly his duty, that to no reader will it appear possible that
to any gentleman there could be a doubt. Instead of the existence
of a difficulty, there was a flood of light upon his path,--so the
reader will think;--a flood so clear that not to see his way was
impossible. A man carried away by abnormal appetites, and wickedness,
and the devil, may of course commit murder, or forge bills, or become
a fraudulent director of a bankrupt company. And so may a man be
untrue to his troth,--and leave true love in pursuit of tinsel, and
beauty, and false words, and a large income. But why should one tell
the story of creatures so base? One does not willingly grovel in
gutters, or breathe fetid atmospheres, or live upon garbage. If we
are to deal with heroes and heroines, let us, at any rate, have
heroes and heroines who are above such meanness as falsehood in love.
This Frank Greystock must be little better than a mean villain, if he
allows himself to be turned from his allegiance to Lucy Morris for an
hour by the seductions and money of such a one as Lizzie Eustace.

We know the dear old rhyme:--

"It is good