another?"

"I think not. I have tried myself, and now I think that it would not
hurt me. There was a time in which I owned to myself that it would be
very bitter, and then I told myself, that I hoped,--that I hoped that
you would wait. But now, I have acknowledged to myself the vanity and
selfishness of such a wish. If I really love you am I not bound to
want what may be best for you?"

"You think that possible?" he said, standing over her, and looking
down upon her. "Judging from your own heart do you think that you
could do that if outward circumstances made it convenient?"

"No, no, no."

"Why should you suppose me to be harder-hearted than yourself, more
callous, more like a beast of the fields?"

"More like a man is what I would have you."

"I have listened to you, Marion, and now you may listen to me. Your
distinctions as to men and women are all vain. There are those, men
and women both, who can love and do love, and there are those who
neither do nor can. Whether it be for good or evil,--we can, you and
I, and we do. It would be impossible to think of giving yourself to
another?"

"That is certainly true."

"It is the same with me,--and will ever be so. Whether you live or
die, I can have no other wife than Marion Fay. As to that I have a
right to expect that you shall believe me. Whether I have a wife or
not you must decide."

"Oh, dearest, do not kill me."

"It has to be so. If you can be firm so can I. As to my name and
my family, it matters nothing. Could I be allowed to look forward
and think that you would sit at my hearth, and that some child
that should be my child should lie in your arms, then I could look
forward to what you call a career. Not that he might be the last of a
hundred Traffords, not that he might be an Earl or a Marquis like his
forefathers, not that he might some day live to be a wealthy peer,
would I have it so,--but because he would be yours and mine." Now she
got up, and threw her arms around him, and stood leaning on him as
he spoke. "I can look forward to that and think of a career. If that
cannot be, the rest of it must provide for itself. There are others
who can look after the Traffords,--and who will do so whether it be
necessary or not. To have gone a little out of the beaten path, to
have escaped some of the traditional absurdities, would have been
something to me. To have let the world see how noble a Countess I
could find for it--that would have satisfied me. A