ver to make you my heir; but if you can persuade her to
marry you, you can take the name of Darrell, and you can guide and
direct her. What do you say, Aubrey?"

"What do I say?" stammered the captain. "I say this--that I love her so
dearly that I would marry her if she had not a farthing. I love her so
that language cannot express the depth of my affection for her."

The captain was for a few minutes quite overcome--he had been so long
dunned for money, so hardly pressed, so desperate, that the chance of
twenty thousand a year and Darrell Court was almost too much for him.
His brow grew damp, and his lips pale. All this might be his own if he
could but win the consent of this girl. Yet he feared her; the proud,
noble face, the grand, dark eyes rose before him, and seemed to rebuke
him for his presumptuous hope. How was he to win her? Flattery, sweet,
soft words would never do it. One scornful look from her sent his ideas
"flying right and left."

"If she were only like other girls," he thought, "I could make her my
wife in a few weeks."

Then he took heart of grace. Had he not been celebrated for his good
fortune among the fair sex? Had he not always found his handsome
person, his low, tender voice, his pleasing manner irresistible? Who was
this proud, dark-eyed girl that she should measure the depths of his
heart and soul, and find them wanting? Surely he must be superior to the
artists in shabby coats by whom she had been surrounded. And yet he
feared as much as he hoped.

"She has such a way of making me feel small," he said to himself; "and
if that kind of feeling comes over me when I am making her an offer, it
will be of no use to plead my suit."

But what a prospect--master of Darrell Court and twenty thousand per
annum! He would endure almost any humiliation to obtain that position.

"She must have me," he said to himself--"she shall have me! I will force
her to be my wife!"

Why, if he could but announce his engagement to Miss Darrell, he could
borrow as much money as would clear off all his liabilities! And how
much he needed money no one knew better than himself. He had paid this
visit to the Court because there were two writs out against him in
London, and, unless he could come to some settlement of them, he knew
what awaited him.

And all--fortune, happiness, wealth, freedom, prosperity--depended on
one word from the proud lips that had hardly ever spoken kindly to him.
He loved her, too--loved h