er to play for money. Mrs. and
the Misses Cipher, and most of the guests, were in the billiard-room
looking on. Lady Raby was writing letters, and Lord Raby riding over
his home farm. Caroline and Lumley had been for some time in close and
earnest conversation. Miss Merton was seated in a large armchair, much
moved, with her handkerchief to her eyes. Lord Vargrave, with his back
to the chimney-piece, was bending down and speaking in a very low voice,
while his quick eye glanced, ever and anon, from the lady's countenance
to the windows, to the doors, to be prepared against any interruption.

"No, my dear friend," said he, "believe me that I am sincere. My
feelings for you are, indeed, such as no words can paint."

"Then why--"

"Why wish you wedded to another; why wed another myself? Caroline, I
have often before explained to you that we are in this the victims of
an inevitable fate. It is absolutely necessary that I should wed Miss
Cameron. I never deceived you from the first. I should have loved
her,--my heart would have accompanied my hand, but for your too
seductive beauty, your superior mind!--yes, Caroline, your mind
attracted me more than your beauty. Your mind seemed kindred to my
own,--inspired with the proper and wise ambition which regards the fools
of the world as puppets, as counters, as chessmen. For myself, a very
angel from heaven could not make me give up the great game of life,
yield to my enemies, slip from the ladder, unravel the web I have
woven! Share my heart, my friendship, my schemes! this is the true and
dignified affection that should exist between minds like ours; all the
rest is the prejudice of children."

"Vargrave, I am ambitious, worldly: I own it; but I could give up all
for you!"

"You think so, for you do not know the sacrifice. You see me now
apparently rich, in power, courted; and this fate you are willing to
share; and this fate you _should_ share, were it the real one I could
bestow on you. But reverse the medal. Deprived of office, fortune gone,
debts pressing, destitution notorious, the ridicule of embarrassments,
the disrepute attached to poverty and defeated ambition, an exile
in some foreign town on the poor pension to which alone I should be
entitled, a mendicant on the public purse; and that, too, so eaten into
by demands and debts, that there is not a grocer in the next market-town
who would envy the income of the retired minister! Retire, fallen,
despised, in the pr