at a very interesting comedy of modern manners.

"Margaret, look at me!" said the man.

His deep, vibrating voice compelled the girl to raise her eyes. She
looked up piteously, and seemed half afraid to withdraw her gaze from
Wyvis' dark earnestness of aspect.

"Margaret--my darling--you said you loved me."

"Yes--I do love you," she murmured; but she looked afraid.

"I am not altered, Margaret: I am the same Wyvis that you loved--the
Wyvis that you kissed down by the brook, when you promised to be my
wife. Have you forgotten? Ah no--not so soon. You would not have come
here to-day if you had forgotten."

"I have not forgotten," she said, in a whisper.

"Then, darling, what difference does it make? There is no stain upon my
birth. I would not ask you to share a dishonored name. But my parents
were honest if they were poor, and what they were does not affect me.
Margaret, speak, tell me, dear, that you will not give me up!"

Margaret tried to withdraw her hand. "I do not know what to say," she
whispered.

"Say that you love me."

"I--have said it."

"Then, that you will not give me up?"

"Mamma!" said Margaret, entreatingly. "You hear what Wyvis says. It is
not his fault. Why--why--won't you let us be happy?"

"Don't appeal to your mother," said Wyvis, the workings of whose
features showed that he was becoming frightfully agitated. "You know
that she is against me. Listen to your own heart--what does it say? It
speaks to you of my love for you, of your own love for me. Darling, you
know how miserable my life has been. Are you going to scatter all my
hopes again and plunge me down in the depths of gloom? And all for what?
To satisfy a worldly scruple. It is not even as if I had been brought up
in my early years in the station to which my father belonged. I have
never known him--never known any relations but the Brands; and they are
not so very much beneath you. Don't fail me, Margaret! I shall lose all
faith in goodness if I lose faith in you!"

"I think," said Lady Caroline, in the rather disheartening pause which
followed upon Wyvis' words--disheartening to him, at least, and also to
Janetta, who had counted much upon Margaret's innate nobility of
soul!--"I think that I may now be permitted to say a word to my daughter
before she replies. What Mr. Wyvis Brand asks you to do, Margaret, is to
marry him at once. Well, the time for coercion has gone by. Of course,
we cannot prevent you from marrying him if