ver, perhaps, the saddest
error!"

This remark was of an order superior in intellect to those which
had preceded it: it contrasted with the sternness of experience the
simplicity of the child; and of such contrasts, indeed, was that
character made up. For with a sweet, an infantine change of tone and
countenance, she added, after a short pause, "They took the money! The
gittern--see, they left that, when they had made it useless."

"I cannot mend the gittern, but I can refill the gipsire," said
Marmaduke.

The girl coloured deeply. "Nay, sir, to earn is not to beg." Marmaduke
did not heed this answer; for as they were now passing by the stunted
trees, under which sat several revellers, who looked up at him from
their cups and tankards, some with sneering, some with grave looks, he
began, more seriously than in his kindly impulse he had hitherto done,
to consider the appearance it must have to be thus seen walking in
public with a girl of inferior degree, and perhaps doubtful repute.
Even in our own day such an exhibition would be, to say the least,
suspicious; and in that day, when ranks and classes were divided with
iron demarcations, a young gallant, whose dress bespoke him of gentle
quality, with one of opposite sex, and belonging to the humbler orders,
in broad day too, was far more open to censure. The blood mounted to
his brow, and halting abruptly, he said, in a dry and altered voice: "My
good damsel, you are now, I think, out of danger; it would ill beseem
you, so young and so comely, to go farther with one not old enough to be
your protector; so, in God's name, depart quickly, and remember me when
you buy your new gittern, poor child!" So saying, he attempted to place
a piece of money in her hand. She put it back, and the coin fell on the
ground. "Nay, this is foolish," said he.

"Alas, sir!" said the girl, gravely, "I see well that you are ashamed of
your goodness. But my father begs not. And once--but that matters not."

"Once what?" persisted Marmaduke, interested in her manner, in spite of
himself.

"Once," said the girl, drawing herself up, and with an expression that
altered the whole character of her face--"the beggar ate at my father's
gate. He is a born gentleman and a knight's son."

"And what reduced him thus?"

"I have said," answered the girl, simply, yet with the same half-scorn
on her lip that it had before betrayed; "he is a scholar, and thought
more of others than himself."

"I neve