ed that you have, as you think, fallen in love,
or that you wish to marry, although you are young. I am annoyed that
you should dream of wishing to marry a simple rustic, the daughter of
my lodge keeper. It is so supremely ridiculous that I can hardly treat
the matter seriously."

"It is serious enough for me," returned his son with a long, deep sigh.
"If I do not marry Dora Thorne, I shall never marry at all."

"Better that than a mesalliance," said Lord Earle, shortly.

"She is good," cried Ronald--"good and fair, modest and graceful. Her
heart is pure as her face is fair. What mesalliance can there be,
father? I never have believed and never shall believe in the cruel
laws of caste. In what is one man better than or superior to another
save that he is more intelligent or more virtuous?"

"I shall never interfere in your politics, Ronald," said Lord Earle,
laughing quietly. "Before you are twenty-one you will have gone
through many stages of that fever. Youth is almost invariably liberal,
age conservative. Adopt what line of politics you will, but do not
bring theory into practice in this instance."

"I should consider myself a hero," continued the young man, "if I could
be the first to break through the trammels of custom and the absurd
laws of caste."

"You would not be the first," said Lord Earle, quietly. "Many before
you have made unequal marriages; many will do so after you, but in
every case I believe regret and disappointment followed."

"They would not in my case," said Ronald, eagerly; "and with Dora
Thorne by my side, I could so anything; without her, I can do nothing."

Lord Earle looked grieved at the pertinacity of his son.

"Most fathers would refuse to hear all this nonsense, Ronald," he said,
gently. "I listen, and try to convince you by reasonable arguments that
the step you seem bent upon taking is one that will entail nothing but
misery. I have said no angry word to you, nor shall I do so. I tell
you simply it can not be. Dora Thorne, my lodge keeper's daughter, is
no fitting wife for my son, the heir of Earlescourt. Come with me,
Ronald; I will show you further what I mean."

They went together, the father and son, so like in face yet so
dissimilar in mind. They had been walking up and down the broad
terrace, one of the chief beauties of Earlescourt. The park and
pleasure grounds, with flushed summer beauty, lay smiling around them.
The song of hundreds of birds trilled