whatever my manner might imply, my heart--if that be the
name for it--gave no concurrence to what the Count attributed to me."

"Do you dislike him?"

"Dislike? No; certainly not; he is too gentle, too obliging, too
conciliating in manner, too well bred to create dislike. He is not very
brilliant--"

"He 'll be a peer," broke in Davis.

"I suspect that all his views of life are deeply tinged with prejudice?"

"He'll be a peer," continued Davis.

"He has been utterly neglected in education."

"He don't want it."

"I mean that to suit the station he fills--"

"He has got the station; he's sure of it; he can't be stripped of it.
In one word, girl, he has, by right and birth, rank and fortune, such
as ten generations of men like myself, laboring hard every hour of their
lives, could never win. He 'll be a peer of England, and I know of no
title means so much."

"But of all his failings," said Lizzy, who seemed to take little heed
of her father's interruptions, while steadily following out her own
thoughts,--"of all his failings, he has none greater or more pernicious
than the belief that it is a mark of intelligence to outwit one's
neighbor; that cunning is a high quality, and craft means genius."

"These might be poor qualities to gain a living with," said Davis, "but
I tell you, once for all, he does n't need to be brilliant, or witty, or
any other nonsense of that kind. He 'll have the right to go where all
the cleverness of the world couldn't place him, to live in a set where,
if he could Write plays like Shakspeare, build bridges like Brunel, or
train a horse like John Scott, it would n't avail him a brass farthing;
and if you only knew, child, what these people think of each other, and
what the world thinks of _them_, you 'd see it's the best stake ever was
run for."

Lizzy never replied a word; every syllable of her father's speech was,
as it were, "filtering down" into her mind, and she brooded long over
the thoughts thus suggested. Thus, walking along in silence, side by
side, they drew nigh the house. They had now gained the little garden
before the door, and were standing in the broad full moonlight, face to
face, Davis saw that her eyes were red and her cheeks marked by tears;
but an impassive calm, and a demeanor subdued even to coldness, seemed
to have succeeded to this emotion. "Oh, my poor girl," broke he out, in
a voice of deepest feeling, "if I did n't know the world so well,--if I
did n't