very different way."

"How was it different, Nora?"

"Oh, so different. I can't tell you how. Mr. Glascock will never come
back again."

"And Mr. Stanbury will?" said the elder sister. Nora made no reply,
but after a while nodded her head. "And you want him to come back?"
She paused again, and again nodded her head. "Then you have accepted
him?"

"I have not accepted him. I have refused him. I have told him that it
was impossible."

"And yet you wish him back again!" Nora again nodded her head.
"That is a state of things I cannot at all understand," said Mrs.
Trevelyan, "and would not believe unless you told me so yourself."

"And you think me very wrong, of course. I will endeavour to do
nothing wrong, but it is so. I have not said a word of encouragement
to Mr. Stanbury; but I love him with all my heart. Ought I to tell
you a lie when you question me? Or is it natural that I should never
wish to see again a person whom I love better than all the world? It
seems to me that a girl can hardly be right if she have any choice of
her own. Here are two men, one rich and the other poor. I shall fall
to the ground between them. I know that. I have fallen to the ground
already. I like the one I can't marry. I don't care a straw for the
one who could give me a grand house. That is falling to the ground.
But I don't see that it is hard to understand, or that I have
disgraced myself."

"I said nothing of disgrace, Nora."

"But you looked it."

"I did not intend to look it, dearest."

"And remember this, Emily, I have told you everything because you
asked me. I do not mean to tell anybody else, at all. Mamma would not
understand me. I have not told him, and I shall not."

"You mean Mr. Stanbury?"

"Yes; I mean Mr. Stanbury. As to Mr. Glascock, of course I shall tell
mamma that. I have no secret there. That is his secret, and I suppose
mamma should know it. But I will have nothing told about the other.
Had I accepted him, or even hinted to him that I cared for him, I
would tell mamma at once."

After that there came something of a lecture, or something, rather,
of admonition, from Mrs. Outhouse. That lady did not attempt to
upbraid, or to find any fault; but observed that as she understood
that Mr. Stanbury had no means whatever, and as Nora herself had
none, there had better be no further intercourse between them, till,
at any rate, Sir Marmaduke and Lady Rowley should be in London. "So
I told him that he must no