land?" Mr. Glascock began to think
of the case, and could not at the moment remember any instance.
"Charles, I do not think you ought to be the first."

"And yet somebody must be first, if the thing is ever to be
done;--and I am too old to wait on the chance of being the second."

She felt that at the rate she was now progressing she would only run
from one little suggestion to another, and that he, either wilfully
or in sheer simplicity, would take such suggestions simply as jokes;
and she was aware that she lacked the skill to bring the conversation
round gradually to the point which she was bound to reach. She must
make another dash, let it be ever so sudden. Her mode of doing so
would be crude, ugly,--almost vulgar she feared; but she would attain
her object and say what she had to say. When once she had warmed
herself with the heat which argument would produce, then, she was
pretty sure, she would find herself at least as strong as he. "I
don't know that the thing ought to be done at all," she said. During
the last moment or two he had put his arm round her waist; and she,
not choosing to bid him desist from embracing her, but unwilling in
her present mood to be embraced, got up and stood before him. "I have
thought, and thought, and thought, and feel that it should not be
done. In marriage, like should go to like." She despised herself for
using Wallachia's words, but they fitted in so usefully, that she
could not refrain from them. "I was wrong not to know it before, but
it is better to know it now, than not to have known it till too late.
Everything that I hear and see tells me that it would be so. If you
were simply an Englishman, I would go anywhere with you; but I am not
fit to be the wife of an English lord. The time would come when I
should be a disgrace to you, and then I should die."

"I think I should go near dying myself," said he, "if you were a
disgrace to me." He had not risen from his chair, and sat calmly
looking up into her face.

"We have made a mistake, and let us unmake it," she continued. "I
will always be your friend. I will correspond with you. I will come
and see your wife."

"That will be very kind!"

"Charles, if you laugh at me, I shall be angry with you. It is right
that you should look to your future life, as it is right that I
should do so also. Do you think that I am joking? Do you suppose that
I do not mean it?"

"You have taken an extra dose this morning of Wallachia Petri