d he asked her whether she would be his
wife, it is possible that the answer which she had prepared would
have been spoken. But he had put the question in another form. Did
she love him? If she could only bring herself to say that she could
love him, she might be lady of Monkhams before the next summer had
come round.

"Nora," he said, "do you think that you can love me?"

"No," she said, and there was something almost of fierceness in the
tone of her voice as she answered him.

"And must that be your final answer to me?"

"Mr. Glascock, what can I say?" she replied. "I will tell you the
honest truth:--I will tell you everything. I came into this room
determined to accept you. But you are so good, and so kind, and so
upright, that I cannot tell you a falsehood. I do not love you. I
ought not to take what you offer me. If I did, it would be because
you are rich, and a lord; and not because I love you. I love some one
else. There;--pray, pray do not tell of me; but I do." Then she flung
away from him and hid her face in a corner of the sofa out of the
light.

Her lover stood silent, not knowing how to go on with the
conversation, not knowing how to bring it to an end. After what
she had now said to him it was impossible that he should press her
further. It was almost impossible that he should wish to do so. When
a lady is frank enough to declare that her heart is not her own to
give, a man can hardly wish to make further prayer for the gift. "If
so," he said, "of course I have nothing to hope."

She was sobbing, and could not answer him. She was half repentant,
partly proud of what she had done,--half repentant in that she had
lost what had seemed to her to be so good, and full of remorse in
that she had so unnecessarily told her secret.

"Perhaps," said he, "I ought to assure you that what you have told me
shall never be repeated by my lips."

She thanked him for this by a motion of her head and hand, not by
words;--and then he was gone. How he managed to bid adieu to Mrs.
Stanbury and her sister, or whether he saw them as he left the house,
she never knew. In her corner of the sofa, weeping in the dark,
partly proud and partly repentant, she remained till her sister came
to her. "Emily," she said, jumping up, "say nothing about it; not
a word. It is of no use. The thing is done and over, and let it
altogether be forgotten."

"It is done and over, certainly," said Mrs. Trevelyan.

"Exactly;--and I suppose a