ing down upon her with a smile. "Even now I
do not understand; please tell me," she said, with a bewildered
expression.

"My cousin Samuel was the sixth earl," said Jervis, taking his
wife's hand and talking to her in the same quietly confidential
tone that he might have used had they two been alone, instead of
the centre figures of a crowded room. "My father was the son of
the younger son, with three lives between him and the title. As I
have told you, Samuel, old Lord Compton, was very cruel to my
mother in her widowhood, and I hotly determined never to have
anything to do with him. Then his son and his grandson died within
a few weeks of each other, and Mr. Clay, who is the family lawyer,
wrote to me telling me that I was the next heir, and Cousin Samuel
wanted me to go home and take up the duties of my new position.
That letter came last summer, but I would not go, and I would not
accept an allowance for myself; but I asked for one for my mother,
and education for my brothers. I have not deceived you, my
dearest. I have only withheld from you facts which did not matter
until now."

Katherine flushed and then grew pale; she knew that all eyes were
upon her, but there was one thing she must know, and her voice had
an anxious ring as she asked: "Did you--did you know this, I mean
that you were the next heir, when you asked me to marry you?"

"Yes, I knew," he answered cheerfully, and now his voice had got
back its old confident ring, for the shadow of constraint which
Katherine had noticed in him last night had been owing to this
knowledge which he was holding back, and which had troubled him
more than he cared to confess. "But even then there was no great
certainty of my succeeding. Cousin Samuel might have married
again, and left another son to come after him. I was just a
working man, and I looked to support my wife by the labour of my
hands. You must forgive me that I did not tell you I was going to
make a great lady of you, because, you see, I did not know until
yesterday, though the scrap of paper you discovered at Ochre Lake
warned me that the title might not be far off; so I was not greatly
surprised when Mr. Clay introduced himself to me yesterday."

"Mr. Clay is evidently a lawyer by nature as well as by profession,
since he was able to keep a secret of such magnitude through so
many miles of travel," interposed the bishop, anxious to break the
strain for Katherine, whose colour was still comi