knowledge of the world, and woman's wit, will see how all that can be
best put right. Still, it is awkward, and demands much consideration.
But putting this aside altogether, if you do firmly believe that Miss
Trevanion is lost to you, can you bear to think that she is to be flung
as a mere cipher into the account of the worldly greatness of an
aspiring politician,--married to some minister too busy to watch over
her, or some duke who looks to pay off his mortgages with her fortune;
minister or duke only regarded as a prop to Trevanion's power against a
counter-cabal, or as giving his section a preponderance in the cabinet?
Be assured such is her most likely destiny, or rather the beginning of a
destiny yet more mournful. Now, I tell you this, that he who marries
Fanny Trevanion should have little other object, for the first few years
of marriage, than to correct her failings and develop her virtues.
Believe one who, alas! has too dearly bought his knowledge of woman,--
hers is a character to be formed. Well, then, if this prize be lost to
you, would it be an irreparable grief to your generous affection to
think that it has fallen to the lot of one who at least knows his
responsibilities, and--who will redeem his own life, hitherto wasted, by
the steadfast endeavor to fulfil them? Can you take this hand still,
and press it, even though it be a rival's?"

"My lord! this from you to me is an honor that--"

"You will not take my hand? Then, believe me, it is not I that will
give that grief to your heart."

Touched, penetrated, melted, by this generosity in a man of such lofty
claims, to one of my age and fortunes, I pressed that noble hand, half
raising it to my lips,--an action of respect that would have misbecome
neither; but he gently withdrew the hand, in the instinct of his natural