much of me."

"When first you showed us that you loved her," she continued, "I
feared that it would not be for good."

"Why should it not be for good?"

"I will not speak of that now, but I thought so. I thought so, and I
told my thoughts to Marion."

"You did?"

"I did;--and I think that in doing so, I did no more than my duty
to a motherless girl. Of the reasons which I gave to her I will
say nothing now. Her reasons were so much stronger, that mine were
altogether unavailing. Her resolutions were built on so firm a rock,
that they needed no persuasions of mine to strengthen them. I had
ever known Marion to be pure, unselfish, and almost perfect. But
I had never before seen how high she could rise, how certainly she
could soar above all weakness and temptation. To her there was never
a moment of doubt. She knew from the very first that it could not be
so."

"It shall be so," he said, jumping up from his chair, and flinging up
his arms.

"It was not I who persuaded her, or her father. Even you cannot
persuade her. Having convinced herself that were she to marry you,
she would injure you, not all her own passionate love will induce her
to accept the infinite delight of yielding to you. What may be best
for you;--that is present to her mind, and nothing else. On that her
heart is fixed, and so clear is her judgment respecting it, that she
will not allow the words of any other to operate on her for a moment.
Marion Fay, Lord Hampstead, is infinitely too great to have been
persuaded in any degree by me."

* * * * * *

Nevertheless Mrs. Roden did allow herself to say that in her opinion
the lover should be allowed to see his mistress. She herself would go
to Pegwell Bay, and endeavour to bring Marion back to Holloway. That
Lord Hampstead should himself go down and spend his long hours at
the little seaside place did not seem to her to be fitting. But she
promised that she would do her best to arrange at any rate another
meeting in Paradise Row.

CHAPTER XIII.

LORD HAMPSTEAD AGAIN WITH MARION.

The Quaker had become as weak as water in his daughter's hands. To
whatever she might have desired he would have given his assent. He
went daily up from Pegwell Bay to Pogson and Littlebird's, but even
then he was an altered man. It had been said there for a few days
that his daughter was to become the wife of the eldest son of the
Marquis of Kingsbury, and then it had been