ble that he had embittered for her all the life of the lady
whom he loved? He had assumed an assured face and a confident smile
while declaring to his mother that no power on earth should stand
between him and his promised wife,--that she would be able to walk
out from her father's hall and marry him as certainly as might the
housemaid or the ploughman's daughter go to her lover. But what would
be achieved by that if she were to walk out only to encounter misery?
The country was so constituted that he and these Traffords were in
truth of a different race; as much so as the negro is different from
the white man. The Post Office clerk may, indeed, possibly become a
Duke; whereas the negro's skin cannot be washed white. But while he
and Lady Frances were as they were, the distance between them was so
great that no approach could be made between them without disruption.
The world might be wrong in this. To his thinking the world was
wrong. But while the facts existed they were too strong to be set
aside. He could do his duty to the world by struggling to propagate
his own opinions, so that the distance might be a little lessened
in his own time. He was sure that the distance was being lessened,
and with this he thought that he ought to have been contented. The
jeering of such a one as Crocker was unimportant though disagreeable,
but it sufficed to show the feeling. Such a friendship as his with
Lord Hampstead had appeared to Crocker to be ridiculous. Crocker
would not have seen the absurdity unless others had seen it also.
Even his own mother saw it. Here in England it was accounted so
foolish a thing that he, a Post Office clerk, should be hand and
glove with such a one as Lord Hampstead, that even a Crocker could
raise a laugh against him! What would the world say when it should
have become known that he intended to lead Lady Frances to the
"hymeneal altar?" As he repeated the words to himself there was
something ridiculous even to himself in the idea that the hymeneal
altar should ever be mentioned in reference to the adventures of such
a person as George Roden, the Post Office clerk. Thinking of all
this, he was not in a happy frame of mind when he reached his home in
Paradise Row.

CHAPTER VIII.

MR. GREENWOOD.

Roden spent a pleasant evening with his friend and his friend's
friend at Hendon Hall before their departure for the yacht,--during
which not a word was said or an allusion made to Lady Frances. The