to your
origin--whose father was a stone-cutter--I have heard?"

"Yes, he was a stone-cutter, and I am sorry to say wasn't even a good
one."

"I don't know that good or bad makes a difference, except, of course, as
it affected his earning a livelihood. But the fact remains that he was a
common workman and that no member of our family on either side has ever
been even remotely connected with trade. Surely, you yourself, Mr.
Starr, must be aware that my niece and you are not in the same walk of
life. Do you not realise the impossibility of--of the connection you
speak of?"

"I realised it so much," I answered, "that until I met her this
afternoon I had determined to wait five--perhaps ten years before asking
her to become my wife."

"Ten years? But what can ten years have to do with it? Families are not
made in ten years, Mr. Starr, and how could that length of time alter
the fact that your father was a person of no education and that you
yourself are a self-made man?"

"I am not ashamed to offer her the man after he is made," I replied.
"What I did not think worthy of her was the man in the making."

"But it is the man in the making that I want," said Sally, rising to her
feet, and taking my hand in hers. "O Aunt Matoaca, I love him!"

The little lady to whom she appealed bent slowly forward in the
firelight, her face, which had grown old and wan, looking up at us, as
we stood there, hand in hand, on the rug.

"I am distressed for you, Sally," she said, "but when it becomes a
question of honour, love must be sacrificed."

"Honour!" cried Sally, and there was a passionate anger in her voice,
"but I _do_ honour him." My hand was in hers, and she stooped and kissed
it before turning to Miss Matoaca, who had drawn herself up, thin and
straight as a blade, in her chair.

"You are right," I said, "to tell me that I am unworthy of your
niece--for I am. I am plain and rough beside her, but, at least, I am
honest. What I offer her is a man's heart, and a man's hand that has
dealt cleanly and fairly with both men and women."

Until the words were uttered my pride had blinded me to my cruelty. Then
I saw two bright red spots appear in Miss Matoaca's thin cheeks, and I
asked myself in anger if the General or George Bolingbroke would have
been guilty of so deep a thrust? Did she dream that I knew her story?
And were those pathetic red spots the outward sign of a stab in her
gentle bosom?

"There are many different kin