"Because he is no match for you, and because your marrying him would not only place you on a lower plane than where you belong, but it would also so seriously injure his position in life that there would be no possible chance for him to retrieve it until my death. I am comparatively a young man, and likely to live a long time. Apart from that, I may marry. I had no expectation or intention of doing so, but his recent defiance of me has made me sometimes feel inclined to the idea. I have so far changed in my feeling on this subject that if I could meet and win a woman to my mind, I would marry at once. What then would become of Horace? He has a mere pittance besides his pay, which is a ridiculous sum for a man to marry on. He has wronged you in putting you in such a position, and you have equally wronged him." Bettina had turned very white as he spoke. The picture he drew was bad enough in itself, but to have it sketched before her in her present surroundings made it infinitely worse. "If we have wronged each other, we have done it ignorantly," she said. "He assured me that you were determined never to marry, and he counted on your past kindness and your attachment to him--" She broke off, her voice shaken. "On the same ground I counted on him," said Lord Hurdly. "He was in no position to marry against my will, and in engaging to do so he defied me. Let him take the consequences." "Then you are determined not to relent?" Bettina faltered. "You will not forgive him for the offence of proposing to make me his wife?" "I did not say that," returned Lord Hurdly, with a subtle change of tone. "I certainly should not forgive him for marrying you, but for proposing to do so I am ready enough to forgive him, provided he comes to his senses at that point and goes no further. In that event I am ready not only to continue the handsome income that I have allowed him, but to give him outright the principal of it." Bettina had never pretended that she was deeply in love with Horace Spotswood. Indeed, she had quite decided within herself that she was incapable of such a state of feeling, and it was her belief that the fervor and intensity of love which she had given to her mother had taken the place of what some women give to their husbands. Still, she looked upon her prospective marriage to him as one of the fixed facts of the universe, and Lord Hurdly's words bewildered her. Keener than this surprise, however, was her sense of humiliation at the implacable offence which Lord Hurdly had taken at his heir's proposed marriage with herself. That he had wished Horace to marry she knew; it was therefore the woman whom he had chosen that Lord Hurdly resented. She rose to her feet, feeling herself giddy, and knowing that she was white with agitation. Her one idea was to get away--to escape the scrutiny of the intense gaze which was fixed upon her. "I must go. I beg your pardon for coming," she said, with a proud coldness, reaching for her wrap.