mbers of our aristocracy who, in marriage,
seek more than beauty and wit,--namely, connections to strengthen their
political station, or wealth to redeem a mortgage and sustain a title."

"My dear Mr. Leslie," replied the marchesa,--and a certain sadness might
be detected in the tone of the voice and the droop of the eye,--"I have
lived long enough in the real world to appreciate the baseness and the
falsehood of most of those sentiments which take the noblest names. I
see through the hearts of the admirers you parade before me, and know
that not one of them would shelter with his ermine the woman to whom he
talks of his heart. Ah," continued Beatrice, with a softness of which
she was unconscious, but which might have been extremely dangerous to
youth less steeled and self-guarded than was Randal Leslie's,--"ah, I
am less ambitious than you suppose. I have dreamed of a friend, a
companion, a protector, with feelings still fresh, undebased by the low
round of vulgar dissipation and mean pleasures,--of a heart so new, that
it might restore my own to what it was in its happy spring. I have seen
in your country some marriages, the mere contemplation of which has
filled my eyes with delicious tears. I have learned in England to know
the value of home. And with such a heart as I describe, and such a home,
I could forget that I ever knew a less pure ambition."

"This language does not surprise me," said Randal; "yet it does not
harmonize with your former answer to me."

"To you," repeated Beatrice, smiling, and regaining her lighter manner;
"to you,--true. But I never had the vanity to think that your affection
for me could bear the sacrifices it would cost you in marriage; that
you, with your ambition, could bound your dreams of happiness to home.
And then, too," said she, raising her head, and with a certain grave
pride in her air,--"and then, I could not have consented to share my
fate with one whom my poverty would cripple. I could not listen to my
heart, if it had beat for a lover without fortune, for to him I could
then have brought but a burden, and betrayed him into a union with
poverty and debt. Now, it may be different. Now I may have the dowry
that befits my birth. And now I may be free to choose according to my
heart as woman, not according to my necessities, as one poor, harassed,
and despairing."

"Ah," said Randal, interested, and drawing still closer towards his fair
companion,--"ah, I congratulate you since