ble?"

"I wish I knew your sister. Is she--firm?"

"Indeed she is."

"I am not so sure that you are."

"No," said he, after considering awhile; "nor am I. But she is not
like Gerald or me. She is more obstinate."

"Less fickle perhaps."

"Yes, if you choose to call it fickle. I don't know that I am fickle.
If I were in love with a girl I should be true to her."

"Are you sure of that?"

"Quite sure. If I were really in love with her I certainly should not
change. It is possible that I might be bullied out of it."

"But she will not be bullied out of it?"

"Mary? No. That is just it. She will stick to it if he does."

"I would if I were she. Where will you find any young man equal to
Frank Tregear?"

"Perhaps you mean to cut poor Mary out."

"That isn't a nice thing for you to say, Lord Silverbridge. Frank is
my cousin,--as indeed you are also; but it so happens that I have
seen a great deal of him all my life. And, though I don't want to cut
your sister out, as you so prettily say, I love him well enough to
understand that any girl whom he loves ought to be true to him."
So far what she said was very well, but she afterwards added a
word which might have been wisely omitted. "Frank and I are almost
beggars."

"What an accursed thing money is," he exclaimed, jumping up from his
chair.

"I don't agree with you at all. It is a very comfortable thing."

"How is anybody who has got it to know if anybody cares for him?"

"You must find that out. There is such a thing I suppose as real
sympathy."

"You tell me to my face that you and Tregear would have been lovers
only that you are both poor."

"I never said anything of the kind."

"And that he is to be passed on to my sister because it is supposed
that she will have some money."

"You are putting words into my mouth which I never spoke, and ideas
into my mind which I never thought."

"And of course I feel the same about myself. How can a fellow help
it? I wish you had a lot of money, I know."

"It is very kind of you;--but why?"

"Well;--I can't explain myself," he said, blushing as was his wont.
"I daresay it wouldn't make any difference."

"It would make a great difference to me. As it is, having none, and
knowing as I do that papa and Percival are getting things into a
worse mess every day, I am obliged to hope that I may some day marry
a man who has got an income."

"I suppose so," said he, still blushing, but frowning at the same
time