f a much lower degree and a greater
age than my own. You shrink from me----"

"No, I don't," Laura said, and here the hand went out resolutely,
and laid itself in Warrington's. She had divined his story from some
previous hints let fall by him, and his first words at its commencement.

"She was a yeoman's daughter in the neighbourhood," Warrington said,
with rather a faltering voice, "and I fancied--what all young men fancy.
Her parents knew who my father was, and encouraged me, with all sorts of
coarse artifices and scoundrel flatteries, which I see now, about their
house. To do her justice, I own she never cared for me, but was forced
into what happened by the threats and compulsion of her family. Would to
God that I had not been deceived: but in these matters we are deceived
because we wish to be so, and I thought I loved that poor woman.

"What could come of such a marriage? I found, before long, that I was
married to a boor. She could not comprehend one subject that interested
me. Her dulness palled upon me till I grew to loathe it. And after some
time of a wretched, furtive union--I must tell you all--I found letters
somewhere (and such letters they were!) which showed me that her heart,
such as it was, had never been mine, but had always belonged to a person
of her own degree.

"At my father's death, I paid what debts I had contracted at college,
and settled every shilling which remained to me in an annuity upon--upon
those who bore my name, on condition that they should hide themselves
away, and not assume it. They have kept that condition, as they would
break it, for more money. If I had earned fame or reputation, that woman
would have come to claim it: if I had made a name for myself those who
no right to it would have borne it; and I entered life at twenty, God
help me--hopeless and ruined beyond remission. I was the boyish victim
of vulgar cheats, and, perhaps, it is only of late I have found out how
hard--ah, how hard--it is to forgive them. I told you the moral before,
Pen; and now I have told you the fable. Beware how you marry out of
your degree. I was made for a better lot than this, I think: but God has
awarded me this one--and so, you see, it is for me to look on, and see
others successful and others happy, with a heart that shall be as little
bitter as possible."

"By Gad, sir," cried the Major, in high good-humour, "I intended you to
marry Miss Laura here."

"And, by Gad, Master Shallow, I owe