f Luxmore?"

"I believe it would. Her mother and I would rather see our little Maud
lying beside her sister Muriel than see her Countess of Luxmore."

These words, hard as they were, John uttered so softly and with such
infinite grief and pain, that they struck the young man, not with
anger, but with an indefinite awe, as if a ghost from his youth--his
wasted youth--had risen up to point out that truth, and show him that
what seemed insult or vengeance was only a bitter necessity.

All he did was to repeat, in a subdued manner--"Your reasons?"

"Ah, Lord Ravenel!" John answered sadly, "do you not see yourself that
the distance between us and you is wide as the poles? Not in worldly
things, but in things far deeper;--personal things, which strike at the
root of love, home--nay, honour."

Lord Ravenel started. "Would you imply that anything in my past life,
aimless and useless as it may have been, is unworthy of my honour--the
honour of our house?"

Saying this he stopped--recoiled--as if suddenly made aware by the very
words himself had uttered, what--contrasted with the unsullied dignity
of the tradesman's life, the spotless innocence of the tradesman's
daughter--what a foul tattered rag, fit to be torn down by an honest
gust, was that flaunting emblazonment, the so-called "honour" of
Luxmore!

"I understand you now. 'The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon
the children,' as your Bible says--your Bible, that I had half begun to
believe in. Be it so. Mr. Halifax, I will detain you no longer."

John intercepted the young man's departure.

"No, you do NOT understand me. I hold no man accountable for any
errors, any shortcomings, except his own."

"I am to conclude, then, that it is to myself you refuse your daughter?"

"It is."

Lord Ravenel once more bowed, with sarcastic emphasis.

"I entreat you not to mistake me," John continued, most earnestly. "I
know nothing of you that the world would condemn, much that it would
even admire; but your world is not our world, nor your aims our aims.
If I gave you my little Maud, it would confer on you no lasting
happiness, and it would be thrusting my child, my own flesh and blood,
to the brink of that whirlpool where, soon or late, every miserable
life must go down."

Lord Ravenel made no answer. His new-born energy, his pride, his
sarcasm, had successively vanished; dead, passive melancholy resumed
its empire over him. Mr. Halifax regarded him with m