"Are you offended with me for calling you Margaret so soon? I do not
think of you as Miss Sherwin, but as Margaret--are you offended with
me for speaking as I think?"

No: she ought not to be offended with me, or with anybody, for doing
that.

"Suppose this difference in rank, which you so cruelly insist on, did
not exist, would you tell me not to hope, not to speak then, as coldly
as you tell me now?"

I must not ask her that--it was no use--the difference in rank _did_
exist.

"Perhaps I have met you too late?--perhaps you are already--"

"No! oh, no!"--she stopped abruptly, as the words passed her lips. The
same lovely blush which I had before seen spreading over her face,
rose on it now. She evidently felt that she had unguardedly said too
much: that she had given me an answer in a case where, according to
every established love-law of the female code, I had no right to
expect one. Her next words accused me--but in very low and broken
tones--of having committed an intrusion which she should hardly have
expected from a gentleman in my position.

"I will regain your better opinion," I said, eagerly catching at the
most favourable interpretation of her last words, "by seeing you for
the next time, and for all times after, with your father's full
permission. I will write to-day, and ask for a private interview with
him. I will tell him all I have told you: I will tell him that you