reakfast. I will come
in again the moment breakfast is over." And so saying he left the
room with a light step.

In the breakfast-parlour it seemed to him as though everybody was
conscious of some important fact. His mother's kiss was peculiarly
solemn and full of solicitude; Aunt Letty smirked as though she was
aware of something--something over and above the great Protestant
tenets which usually supported her; and Mary had no joke to fling at
him.

"Emmeline," he whispered, "you have told."

"No, indeed," she replied. But what mattered it? Everybody would know
now in a few minutes. So he ate his breakfast, and then returned to
Sir Thomas.

"Father," said he, as soon as he had got into the arm-chair, in which
it was his custom to sit when talking with Sir Thomas, "I hope what
I am going to tell you will give you pleasure. I have proposed to a
young lady, and she has--accepted me."

"You have proposed, and have been accepted!"

"Yes, father."

"And the young lady--?"

"Is Lady Clara Desmond. I hope you will say that you approve of it.
She has no fortune, as we all know, but that will hardly matter to
me; and I think you will allow that in every other respect she is--"

Perfect, Herbert would have said, had he dared to express his true
meaning. But he paused for a moment to look for a less triumphant
word; and then paused again, and left his sentence incomplete, when
he saw the expression of his father's face.

"Oh, father! you do not mean to say that you do not like her?"

But it was not dislike that was expressed in his father's face, as
Herbert felt the moment after he had spoken. There was pain there,
and solicitude, and disappointment; a look of sorrow at the tidings
thus conveyed to him; but nothing that seemed to betoken dislike of
any person.

"What is it, sir? Why do you not speak to me? Can it be that you
disapprove of my marrying?"

Sir Thomas certainly did disapprove of his son's marrying, but he
lacked the courage to say so. Much misery that had hitherto come upon
him, and that was about to come on all those whom he loved so well,
arose from this lack of courage. He did not dare to tell his son that
he advised him for the present to put aside all such hopes. It would
have been terrible for him to do so; but he knew that in not doing so
he was occasioning sorrow that would be more terrible.

And yet he did not do it. Herbert saw clearly that the project was
distasteful to his father,--that