rejudices will be too hard for him, and that he had better give it
up before he adds to his own misery, and perhaps to hers. What I have
said has not been in the way of pleading,--but only as showing the
ground on which I think that such a marriage would be inexpedient.
It is not that we, or our sister, are too bad or too low for such
contact; but that you, on your side, are not as yet good enough or
high enough."

"I will not dispute that with you, Mrs. Roden. But you will give him
my message?"

"Yes; I will give him your message."

Then Lord Hampstead, having spent a full hour in the house, took his
departure and rode away.

"Just an hour," said Clara Demijohn, who was still looking out of
Mrs. Duffer's window. "What can they have been talking about?"

"I think he must be making up to the widow," said Mrs. Duffer, who
was so lost in surprise as to be unable to suggest any new idea.

"He'd never have come with saddle horses to do that. She wouldn't be
taken by a young man spending his money in that fashion. She'd like
saving ways better. But they're his own horses, and his own man,
and he's no more after the widow than he's after me," said Clara,
laughing.

"I wish he were, my dear."

"There may be as good as him come yet, Mrs. Duffer. I don't think so
much of their having horses and grooms. When they have these things
they can't afford to have wives too,--and sometimes they can't afford
to pay for either." Then, having seen the last of Lord Hampstead as
he rode out of the Row, she went back to her mother's house.

But Mrs. Demijohn had been making use of her time while Clara and
Mrs. Duffer had been wasting theirs in mere gazing, and making vain
surmises. As soon as she found herself alone the old woman got her
bonnet and shawl, and going out slily into the Row, made her way down
to the end of the street in the direction opposite to that in which
the groom was at that moment walking the horses. There she escaped
the eyes of her niece and of the neighbours, and was enabled to wait
unseen till the man, in his walking, came down to the spot at which
she was standing. "My young man," she said in her most winning voice,
when the groom came near her.

"What is it, Mum?"

"You'd like a glass of beer, wouldn't you;--after walking up and down
so long?"

"No, I wouldn't, not just at present." He knew whom he served, and
from whom it would become him to take beer.

"I'd be happy to pay for a pint," said Mrs. De