most fortunate among woman to have won a love for herself that had in it
no taint of this world.

So they flung the glamor of love and flattery around her, until she lost
the keen perception of right and wrong that would have saved her.

She promised to be Allan Lyster's wife. When he had won that promise
from her, he pretended to think better of it.

"I am wrong to ask you, Marion; I am selfish, I ought not even wish you
to share my lot."

She asked him why, raising her sweet eyes to his face.

"Why, because when you go out into the great world peers and princes
will woo you, my darling; the noblest in the land will sue for your
favor, and you, who might have been a duchess, will repent loving and
caring for one so poor and obscure as I am. I can give you no title."

"You can give me what I value more," she said. "You can give me true and
disinterested love."

He did not forget his sister's advice, that he should have that promise
in writing. One evening--it was August then, when the fruit hung ripe on
the trees--he told her, with many sighs, that he should not see her
again for some days.

"How am I to live through them, Marion, I do not know; now when I wake,
my first thought is that I shall see you; all the world seems so fair
and life so bright, because I shall see you. What will happen to me when