most fertile source of sorrowing.

"Plenty they tell me,--though I do not in the least know what plenty
means."

"Then Ayala why should you not have him?"

"Because I can't," said Ayala. "How is a girl to love a man if she
does not love him. Liking has nothing to do with it. You don't think
liking ought to have anything to do with it?"

This question had not been answered when Aunt Margaret came into the
room, declaring that the Tringle man-servant, who had walked across
the park with Miss Dormer, was waxing impatient. The sisters,
therefore, were separated, and Lucy returned to Queen's Gate.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

MISS DOCIMER.

"I tell you fairly that I think you altogether wrong;--that it is
cowardly, unmanly, and disgraceful. I don't mean, you see, to put
what you call a fine point upon it."

"No, you don't."

"It is one of those matters on which a person must speak the truth or
not speak at all. I should not have spoken unless you forced it upon
me. You don't care for her in the least."

"That's true. I do not know that I am especially quick at what you
call caring for young ladies. If I care for anybody it is for you."

"I suppose so; but that may as well be dropped for the present. You
mean to marry this girl simply because she has got a lot of money?"

"Exactly that;--as you before long will marry some gentleman only
because he has got money."

"You have no right to say so because I am engaged to no man. But if
I were so it is quite different. Unless I marry I can be nobody. I
can have no existence that I can call my own. I have no other way of
pushing myself into the world's notice. You are a man."

"You mean to say that I could become a merchant or a lawyer,--be a
Lord Chancellor in time, or perhaps an Archbishop of Canterbury."

"You can live and eat and drink and go where you wish without being
dependent on any one. If I had your freedom and your means do you
think that I would marry for money?"

In this dialogue the main part was taken by Mr. Frank Houston, whose
ambition it was to marry Miss Gertrude Tringle, and the lady's
part by his cousin and intimate friend, Miss Imogene Docimer. The
scene was a walk through a pine-forest on the southern slopes of
the Tyrolean Alps, and the occasion had been made a little more
exhilarating than usual by the fact that Imogene had been strongly
advised both by her brother, Mr. Mudbury Docimer, and by her
sister-in law, Mrs. Mudbury Docimer, not