is chair
and asked her sister to go away. "Mrs. Trevelyan," he said, "I want
to speak a few words to your sister. I hope you will give me the
opportunity."

"Nora!" exclaimed Mrs. Trevelyan.

"She knows nothing about it," said Hugh.

"Am I to go?" said Mrs. Trevelyan to her sister. But Nora said never
a word. She sat perfectly fixed, not turning her eyes from the object
on which she was gazing.

[Illustration: "Am I to go?"]

"Pray,--pray do," said Hugh.

"I cannot think that it will be for any good," said Mrs. Trevelyan;
"but I know that she may be trusted. And I suppose it ought to be so,
if you wish it."

"I do wish it, of all things," said Hugh, still standing up, and
almost turning the elder sister out of the room by the force of his
look and voice. Then, with another pause of a moment, Mrs. Trevelyan
rose from her chair and left the room, closing the door after her.

Hugh, when he found that the coast was clear for him, immediately
began his task with a conviction that not a moment was to be lost.
He had told himself a dozen times that the matter was hopeless,
that Nora had shown him by every means in her power that she was
indifferent to him, that she with all her friends would know that
such a marriage was out of the question; and he had in truth come
to believe that the mission which he had in hand was one in which
success was not possible. But he thought that it was his duty to go
on with it. "If a man love a woman, even though it be the king and
the beggar-woman reversed,--though it be a beggar and a queen, he
should tell her of it. If it be so, she has a right to know it and to
take her choice. And he has a right to tell her, and to say what he
can for himself." Such was Hugh's doctrine in the matter; and, acting
upon it, he found himself alone with his mistress.

"Nora," he said, speaking perhaps with more energy than the words
required, "I have come here to tell you that I love you, and to ask
you to be my wife."

Nora, for the last ten minutes, had been thinking that this would
come,--that it would come at once; and yet she was not at all
prepared with an answer. It was now weeks since she had confessed to
herself frankly that nothing else but this,--this one thing which was
now happening, this one thing which had now happened,--that nothing
else could make her happy, or could touch her happiness. She had
refused a man whom she otherwise would have taken, because her heart
had been g