most men before, I really feel as if the
rest of her sex had lost every charm. I was passing through the street
now--merely to look up at her windows."

"You speak of Madame di Negra? I have just left her. Certainly, she
is two or three years older than you; but if you can get over that
misfortune, why not marry her?"

"Marry her!" cried Frank, in amaze, and all his colour fled from his
cheeks. "Marry her! Are you serious?"

"Why not?"

"But even if she, who is so accomplished, so admired, even if she would
accept me, she is, you know, poorer than myself. She has told me so
frankly. That woman has such a noble heart,--and--and--my father would
never consent, nor my mother either. I know they would not."

"Because she is a foreigner?"

"Yes--partly."

"Yet the squire suffered his cousin to marry a foreigner."

"That was different. He had no control over Jemima; and a
daughter-in-law is so different; and my father is so English in his
notions; and Madame di Negra, you see, is altogether so foreign. Her
very graces would be against her in his eyes."

"I think you do both your parents injustice. A foreigner of low
birth--an actress or singer, for instance--of course would be highly
objectionable; but a woman like Madame di Negra, of such high birth and
connections--"

Frank shook his head. "I don't think the Governor would care a straw
about her connections, if she were a king's daughter. He considers all
foreigners pretty much alike. And then, you know" (Frank's voice sank
into a whisper),--"you know that one of the very reasons why she is so
dear to me would be an insuperable objection to the old-fashioned folks
at home."

"I don't understand you, Frank."

"I love her the more," said young Hazeldean, raising his front with
a noble pride, that seemed to speak of his descent from a race of
cavaliers and gentlemen,--"I love her the more because the world has
slandered her name,--because I believe her to be pure and wronged. But
would they at the Hall,--they who do not see with a lover's eyes,
they who have all the stubborn English notions about the indecorum and
license of Continental manners, and will so readily credit the worst?
Oh, no! I love, I cannot help it--but I have no hope."

"It is very possible that you may be right," exclaimed Randal, as if
struck and half convinced by his companion's argument,--"very possible;
and certainly I think that the homely folks at the Hall would fret and
fume at first