her if such a one should ask for her hand, such a one as she might
find among those of whom she dreamed as being more noble than Dukes,
even though they were numbered among the world's proletaries? Then
she had told herself that if any such a one should come,--if at
any time any should be allowed by herself to come,--he should be
estimated by his merits, whether Duke or proletary. With her mind
in such a state she had of course been prone to receive kindly the
overtures of her brother's friend.

What was there missing in him that a girl should require? It was
so that she had asked herself the question. As far as manners were
concerned, this man was a gentleman. She was quite sure of that.
Whether proletary or not, there was nothing about him to offend the
taste of the best-born of ladies. That he was better educated than
any of the highly-bred young men she saw around her, she was quite
sure. He had more to talk about than others. Of his birth and family
she knew nothing, but rather prided herself in knowing nothing,
because of that doctrine of hers that a man is to be estimated only
by what he is himself, and not at all by what he may derive from
others. Of his personal appearance, which went far with her, she was
very proud. He was certainly a handsome young man, and endowed with
all outward gifts of manliness: easy in his gait, but not mindful of
it, with motions of his body naturally graceful but never studied,
with his head erect, with a laugh in his eye, well-made as to his
hands and feet. Neither his intellect nor his political convictions
would have recommended a man to her heart, unless there had been
something in the outside to please her eye, and from the first moment
in which she had met him he had never been afraid of her,--had
ventured when he disagreed from her to laugh at her, and even to
scold her. There is no barrier in a girl's heart so strong against
love as the feeling that the man in question stands in awe of her.

She had taken some time before she had given him her answer, and had
thought much of the perils before her. She had known that she could
not divest herself of her rank. She had acknowledged to herself that,
whether it was for good or bad, a Marquis's daughter could not be
like another girl. She owed much to her father, much to her brothers,
something even to her stepmother. But was the thing she proposed to
do of such a nature as to be regarded as an evil to her family? She
could see t