a."

"Of course I hope you will be happy. Of course I do. No wonder he
lent me the pony!"

"You must forget all that."

"Forget what?"

"Well,--nothing. You need forget nothing," said Lady Laura, "for
nothing has been said that need be regretted. Only wish me joy, and
all will be pleasant."

"Lady Laura, I do wish you joy, with all my heart,--but that will not
make all things pleasant. I came up here to ask you to be my wife."

"No;--no, no; do not say it."

"But I have said it, and will say it again. I, poor, penniless, plain
simple fool that I am, have been ass enough to love you, Lady Laura
Standish; and I brought you up here to-day to ask you to share with
me--my nothingness. And this I have done on soil that is to be all
your own. Tell me that you regard me as a conceited fool,--as a
bewildered idiot."

"I wish to regard you as a dear friend,--both of my own and of my
husband," said she, offering him her hand.

"Should I have had a chance, I wonder, if I had spoken a week since?"

"How can I answer such a question, Mr. Finn? Or, rather, I will,
answer it fully. It is not a week since we told each other, you to
me and I to you, that we were both poor,--both without other means
than those which come to us from our fathers. You will make your
way;--will make it surely; but how at present could you marry any
woman unless she had money of her own? For me,--like so many other
girls, it was necessary that I should stay at home or marry some one
rich enough to dispense with fortune in a wife. The man whom in all
the world I think the best has asked me to share everything with
him;--and I have thought it wise to accept his offer."

"And I was fool enough to think that you loved me," said Phineas. To
this she made no immediate answer. "Yes, I was. I feel that I owe it
you to tell you what a fool I have been. I did. I thought you loved
me. At least I thought that perhaps you loved me. It was like a child
wanting the moon;--was it not?"

"And why should I not have loved you?" she said slowly, laying her
hand gently upon his arm.

"Why not? Because Loughlinter--"

"Stop, Mr. Finn; stop. Do not say to me any unkind word that I
have not deserved, and that would make a breach between us. I have
accepted the owner of Loughlinter as my husband, because I verily
believe that I shall thus do my duty in that sphere of life to which
it has pleased God to call me. I have always liked him, and I will
love him. For you,