house without seeing the Countess again.

CHAPTER XI.

IT IS TOO LATE.

The Countess had resolved that she would let their visitor depart
without saying a word to him. Whatever might be the result of the
interview, she was aware that she could not improve it by asking any
question from the young lord, or by hearing any account of it from
him. The ice had been broken, and it would now be her object to have
her daughter invited down to Yoxham as soon as possible. If once the
Earl's friends could be brought to be eager for the match on his
account, as was she on her daughter's behalf, then probably the thing
might be done. For herself, she expected no invitation, no immediate
comfort, no tender treatment, no intimate familiar cousinship. She
had endured hitherto, and would be contented to endure, so that
triumph might come at last. Nor did she question her daughter very
closely, anxious as she was to learn the truth.

Could she have heard every word that had been spoken she would have
been sure of success. Could Daniel Thwaite have heard every word he
would have been sure that the girl was about to be false to him. But
the girl herself believed herself to have been true. The man had been
so soft with her, so tender, so pleasant,--so loving with his sweet
cousinly offers of affection, that she could not turn herself against
him. He had been to her eyes beautiful, noble,--almost divine. She
knew of herself that she could not be his wife,--that she was not fit
to be his wife,--because she had given her troth to the tailor's son.
When her cousin touched her check with his lips she remembered that
she had submitted to be kissed by one with whom her noble relative
could hold no fellowship whatever. A feeling of degradation came
upon her, as though by contact with this young man she was suddenly
awakened to a sense of what her own rank demanded from her. When
her mother had spoken to her of what she owed to her family, she
had thought only of all the friendship that she and her mother had
received from her lover and his father. But when Lord Lovel told
her what she was,--how she should ever be regarded by him as a dear
cousin,--how her mother should be accounted a countess, and receive
from him the respect due to her rank,--then she could understand
how unfitting were a union between the Lady Anna Lovel and Daniel
Thwaite, the journeyman tailor. Hitherto Daniel's face had been noble
in her eyes,--the face of a man wh