k my love for you
as if it were a trifle, to speak in that way in the face of the fact.
We can never be married."

"Some time--we might," said Dorothea, in a trembling voice.

"When?" said Will, bitterly. "What is the use of counting on any
success of mine? It is a mere toss up whether I shall ever do more
than keep myself decently, unless I choose to sell myself as a mere pen
and a mouthpiece. I can see that clearly enough. I could not offer
myself to any woman, even if she had no luxuries to renounce."

There was silence. Dorothea's heart was full of something that she
wanted to say, and yet the words were too difficult. She was wholly
possessed by them: at that moment debate was mute within her. And it
was very hard that she could not say what she wanted to say. Will was
looking out of the window angrily. If he would have looked at her and
not gone away from her side, she thought everything would have been
easier. At last he turned, still resting against the chair, and
stretching his hand automatically towards his hat, said with a sort of
exasperation, "Good-by."

"Oh, I cannot bear it--my heart will break," said Dorothea, starting
from her seat, the flood of her young passion bearing down all the
obstructions which had kept her silent--the great tears rising and
falling in an instant: "I don't mind about poverty--I hate my wealth."

In an instant Will was close to her and had his arms round her, but she
drew her head back and held his away gently that she might go on
speaking, her large tear-filled eyes looking at his very simply, while
she said in a sobbing childlike way, "We could live quite well on my
own fortune--it is too much--seven hundred a-year--I want so little--no
new clothes--and I will learn what everything costs."

CHAPTER LXXXIV.

"Though it be songe of old and yonge,
That I sholde be to blame,
Theyrs be the charge, that spoke so large
In hurtynge of my name."
--The Not-Browne Mayde.

It was just after the Lords had thrown out the Reform Bill: that
explains how Mr. Cadwallader came to be walking on the slope of the
lawn near the great conservatory at Freshitt Hall, holding the "Times"
in his hands behind him, while he talked with a trout-fisher's
dispassionateness about the prospects of the country to Sir James
Chettam. Mrs. Cadwallader, the Dowager Lady Chettam, and Celia were
sometimes seated on garden-chairs, sometime