away your
great rank--"

"No," shouted Sir Peregrine; "not though I married a
kitchen-maid,--instead of a lady who in social life is my equal."

"Ah, no; I should not have said rank. You cannot lose that;--but your
station in the world, the respect of all around you, the--the--the--"

"Who has been telling you all this?"

"I have wanted no one to tell me. Thinking of it has told it me all.
My own heart which is full of gratitude and love for you has told
me."

"You have not seen Lord Alston?"

"Lord Alston! oh, no."

"Has Peregrine been speaking to you?"

"Peregrine!"

"Yes; Peregrine; my grandson?"

"He has spoken to me."

"Telling you to say this to me. Then he is an ungrateful boy;--a very
ungrateful boy. I would have done anything to guard him from wrong in
this matter."

"Ah; now I see the evil that I have done. Why did I ever come into
the house to make quarrels between you?"

"There shall be no quarrel. I will forgive him even that if you will
be guided by me. And, dearest Mary, you must be guided by me now.
This matter has gone too far for you to go back--unless, indeed, you
will say that personally you have an aversion to the marriage."

"Oh, no; no; it is not that," she said eagerly. She could not help
saying it with eagerness. She could not inflict the wound on his
feelings which her silence would then have given.

"Under those circumstances, I have a right to say that the marriage
must go on."

"No; no."

"But I say it must. Sit down, Mary." And she did sit down, while he
stood leaning over her and thus spoke. "You speak of sacrificing
me. I am an old man with not many more years before me. If I did
sacrifice what little is left to me of life with the object of
befriending one whom I really love, there would be no more in it than
what a man might do, and still feel that the balance was on the right
side. But here there will be no sacrifice. My life will be happier,
and so will Edith's. And so indeed will that boy's, if he did but
know it. For the world's talk, which will last some month or two, I
care nothing. This I will confess, that if I were prompted to this
only by my own inclination, only by love for you--" and as he spoke
he held out his hand to her, and she could not refuse him hers--"in
such a case I should doubt and hesitate and probably keep aloof from
such a step. But it is not so. In doing this I shall gratify my own
heart, and also serve you in your great troubles. Bel