ean. If he thinks you fit, and you can like
him,--as you say you do,--what more can be wanted? Does he not wish
it?"

"I do not know. He said he did not, and then,--I think he said he
did."

"Is that it?"

"No, mamma. It is not that; not that only. It is too late!"

"Too late! How too late? Anna, you must tell me what you mean. I
insist upon it that you tell me what you mean. Why is it too late?"
But Lady Anna was not prepared to tell her meaning. She had certainly
not intended to say anything to her mother of her solemn promise to
Daniel Thwaite. It had been arranged between him and her that nothing
was to be said of it till this law business should be all over. He
had sworn to her that to him it made no difference, whether she
should be proclaimed to be the Lady Anna, the undoubted owner of
thousands a year, or Anna Murray, the illegitimate daughter of the
late Earl's mistress, a girl without a penny, and a nobody in the
world's esteem. No doubt they must shape their life very differently
in this event or in that. How he might demean himself should this
fortune be adjudged to the Earl, as he thought would be the case when
he first made the girl promise to be his wife, he knew well enough.
He would do as his father had done before him, and, he did not
doubt,--with better result. What might be his fate should the wealth
of the Lovels become the wealth of his intended wife, he did not yet
quite foreshadow to himself. How he should face and fight the world
when he came to be accused of having plotted to get all this wealth
for himself he did not know. He had dreams of distributing the
greater part among the Lovels and the Countess, and taking himself
and his wife with one-third of it to some new country in which they
would not in derision call his wife the Lady Anna, and in which he
would be as good a man as any earl. But let all that be as it might,
the girl was to keep her secret till the thing should be settled.
Now, in these latter days, it had come to be believed by him, as by
nearly everybody else, that the thing was well-nigh settled. The
Solicitor-General had thrown up the sponge. So said the bystanders.
And now there was beginning to be a rumour that everything was to
be set right by a family marriage. The Solicitor-General would not
have thrown up the sponge,--so said they who knew him best,--without
seeing a reason for doing so. Serjeant Bluestone was still indignant,
and Mr. Hardy was silent and moody. B