you. Wearing his Majesty's uniform, as I do, I could--"

"Pray say no more, Edward, I beg," interrupted Lucy. "I am grieved to
be obliged to disappoint you--though I do not think the disappointment
will be very great--but what you ask is quite impossible. In the first
place I must frankly say that I do not love you; and in the second I
must with equal frankness say that, though I might love ever so much, I
would _never_ marry a man who needed that I should `take him in hand' to
make a reformed character of him. You are my cousin, and, as such, I
shall always regard you with friendly interest; but I shall never be
able to entertain for you any warmer feeling."

Walford, pale to the lips with surprise and chagrin, looked
incredulously in the face of the fair girl by whose side he was seated.
He was completely staggered. The idea of his being indifferent to his
cousin had never for a single instant occurred to him. He had won for
himself the reputation of being quite a "lady-killer;" and now this
little country-bred girl had the impertinence to tell him coolly that
she did not love him; nay, more--to hint pretty strongly that she
regarded him with feelings not very far removed from contempt, because,
forsooth, he had lived a somewhat fast life. Why, many of the girls he
had met had positively _admired_ him for his rakishness--he did not
pause to consider what manner of girls these were, though, by the bye.
It was monstrous, it was positively insulting. Then, in addition to the
severe wound to his _amour-propre_, there was the disappointment of his
hopes of pecuniary aggrandisement; Lucy's fortune, modest though it was,
would have been of the utmost service to him. It was true, he knew,
that she would not have a penny of her own until her mother died, but
that, he was firmly convinced, would not be a very long-postponed event;
the "old fool"--as he called Mrs Walford in his heart--would doubtless
be in her grave long enough before he returned from foreign service--
and, at all events, he was willing to risk that. But then Lucy had said
she would not have him. Surely she could not mean it; she was only
saying it to try him, or--stay--was it possible that she loved that
sailor-fellow Leicester? He would find out.

"Are you _quite sure_, Lucy, that you will never be able to love me?" he
asked, infusing a very successful affectation of passionate entreaty
into the tones of his voice. "Perhaps I have spoken too qu