had lived. I wish the boy had lived. If you have
thought that I wanted all this, you have done me wrong. I have wanted
nothing but to have George to live with me. If anybody thinks that I
married him because all this might come,--oh, they do not know me."

"I know you, Mary."

"Then you will not believe that."

"I do not believe it. I have never believed it. I know that you are
good and disinterested and true of heart. I have loved you dearly and
more dearly as I have seen you every day. But Mary, you are fond of
what the world calls--pleasure."

"Yes," said Mary, after a pause, "I am fond of pleasure. Why not? I
hope I am not fond of doing harm to anyone."

"If you will only remember how great are your duties. You may have
children to whom you may do harm. You have a husband, who will now have
many cares, and to whom much harm may be done. Among women you will be
the head of a noble family, and may grace or disgrace them all by your
conduct."

"I will never disgrace them," she said proudly.

"Not openly, not manifestly I am sure. Do you think that there are no
temptations in your way?"

"Everybody has temptations."

"Who will have more than you? Have you thought that every tenant, every
labourer on the estate will have a claim on you?"

"How can I have thought of anything yet?"

"Don't be angry with me, dear, if I bid you think of it. I think of
it,--more I know than I ought to do. I have been so placed that I could
do but little good and little harm to others than myself. The females
of a family such as ours, unless they marry, are very insignificant in
the world. You who but a few years ago were a little school girl in
Brotherton have now been put over all our heads."

"I didn't want to be put over anybody's head."

"Fortune has done it for you, and your own attractions. But I was going
to say that little as has been my power and low as is my condition, I
have loved the family and striven to maintain its respectability. There
is not, I think, a face on the estate I do not know. I shall have to go
now and see them no more."

"Why should you go?"

"It will probably be proper. No married man likes to have his unmarried
sisters in his house."

"I shall like you. You shall never go."

"Of course I shall go with mamma and the others. But I would have you
sometimes think of me and those I have cared for, and I would have you
bear in mind that the Marchioness of Brotherton should have more to do
than t