want my own will."

"Well, that is to be had, my lord."

"How?"

"By taking his for yours as the better of the two, which it must be
every way."

"That's all moonshine."

"It _is_ light, my lord."

"Well, I don't mind confessing, if I am to die, I should prefer heaven
to the other place, but I trust I have no chance of either. Do you now
honestly believe there are two such places?"

"I don't know, my lord."

"You don't know? And you come here to comfort a dying man!"

"Your lordship must first tell me what you mean by 'two _such_
places.' And as to comfort, going by my notions, I cannot tell which
you would be more or less comfortable in; and that, I presume, would
be the main point with your lordship."

"And what, pray, sir, would be the main point with you?"

"To get nearer to God."

"Well, I can't say _I_ want to get nearer to God. It's little he's
ever done for me."

"It's a good deal he has tried to do for you, my lord."

"Well, who interfered? Who stood in his way, then?"

"Yourself, my lord."

"I wasn't aware of it. When did he ever try to do anything for me and
I stood in his way?"

"When he gave you one of the loveliest of women, my lord," said Mr.
Graham with solemn, faltering voice, "and you left her to die in
neglect and her child to be brought up by strangers."

The marquis gave a cry. The unexpected answer had roused the
slowly-gnawing death and made it bite deeper.

"What have _you_ to do," he almost screamed, "with my affairs? It was
for _me_ to introduce what I chose of them. You presume."

"Pardon me, my lord: you led me to what I was bound to say. Shall I
leave you, my lord?"

The marquis made no answer. "God knows I loved her," he said after a
while with a sigh.

"You loved her, my lord?"

"I did, by God!"

"Love a woman like that and come to this?"

"Come to this? We must all come to this, I fancy, sooner or later.
Come to what, in the name of Beelzebub?"

"That, having loved a woman like her, you are content to lose her. In
the name of God, have you no desire to see her again?"

"It would be an awkward meeting," said the marquis.

His was an old love, alas! He had not been capable of the sort that
defies change. It had faded from him until it seemed one of the things
that are not. Although his being had once glowed in its light, he
could now speak of a meeting as awkward.

"Because you wronged her?" suggested the schoolmaster.

"Because they lied to me, by