e no good. As you say, I have chosen
for myself, and I must put up with it. When I see the carriages going
about in the streets, and remember how often I shall have to go home
in an omnibus, I do think about it a good deal."

"I'm afraid you will think when it is too late."

"It isn't that I don't like carriages, papa. I do like them; and
pretty dresses, and brooches, and men and women who have nothing to
do, and balls, and the opera; but--I love this man, and that is more
to me than all the rest. I cannot help myself, if it were ever so.
Papa, you mustn't be angry with me. Pray, pray, pray do not say that
horrid word again."

This was the end of the interview. Sir Marmaduke found that he had
nothing further to say. Nora, when she reached her last prayer to her
father, referring to that curse with which he had threatened her, was
herself in tears, and was leaning on him with her head against his
shoulder. Of course he did not say a word which could be understood
as sanctioning her engagement with Stanbury. He was as strongly
determined as ever that it was his duty to save her from the perils
of such a marriage as that. But, nevertheless, he was so far overcome
by her as to be softened in his manners towards her. He kissed her as
he left her, and told her to go to her mother. Then he went out and
thought of it all, and felt as though Paradise had been opened to his
child and she had refused to enter the gate.

CHAPTER LXXI.

SHEWING WHAT HUGH STANBURY THOUGHT ABOUT THE DUTY OF MAN.

In the conference which took place between Sir Marmaduke and his
wife after the interview between him and Nora, it was his idea that
nothing further should be done at all. "I don't suppose the man will
come here if he be told not," said Sir Marmaduke, "and if he does,
Nora of course will not see him." He then suggested that Nora would
of course go back with them to the Mandarins, and that when once
there she would not be able to see Stanbury any more. "There must be
no correspondence or anything of that sort, and so the thing will die
away." But Lady Rowley declared that this would not quite suffice.
Mr. Stanbury had made his offer in due form, and must be held to be
entitled to an answer. Sir Marmaduke, therefore, wrote the following
letter to the "penny-a-liner," mitigating the asperity of his
language in compliance with his wife's counsels.

Manchester Street, April 20th, 186--.

MY DEAR SIR,--

Lady Rowley h