He paused for a moment with a sigh, raised his head high the next instant, and then added, "I have but one favour to ask you, which is this--not to let what I have just said make any difference in your demeanor towards me, during the short period of my stay. I had no intention of troubling your ear with such things at all; but your own question brought forth what I would willingly have concealed--perhaps in this I have been wrong; but believe me, I am very well aware that difference of fortune has placed a barrier between us which cannot be overleaped. This is the only favour, then, dear lady--do not alter towards me--let me see you ever the same as I have yet beheld you; and when I go away for ever, let me carry with me the remembrance of Mary Clifford as a picture of all that deserves love and admiration upon earth.--Do not, do not change, notwithstanding my rash confessions." Mary Clifford looked up in his face, and a varying light played in her eyes, as if, at one moment, it was about to break forth sportively, and at another would have drowned itself out in tears. "I must change, Hayward!" she said at length, with a bright smile upon her lip, "indeed you ask too much. How can you expect that I should live in the same house with you, and know that you love me, without showing in some degree what is passing in my own breast?" "Mary! Mary!" he exclaimed, laying his hand upon her arm, and gazing in her face, "you would not--oh, I am sure you would not trifle with me--" "Not for the world," she answered. "Edward, I am incapable of trifling with any man; but with you, to whom I owe so much, it would be base indeed!" "But the great disparity of fortune," said her lover, with the shade again upon his brow. "Oh, Mary, how can it ever be? You, I have heard, are wealthy--they call you 'the heiress'--and I know myself to be poor. Are you aware--surely I told you, that all I had saved out of the wreck of my father's fortune, only amounted at first to--" "Will you pain me?--Do you wish to grieve me?" asked Mary Clifford, "if not, do not mention such matters as in any way likely to affect my feelings or conduct; and yet I do not wish you to consider me as a romantic girl, for I am not. I have always thought that a competence must be possessed to render the lives of any two people happy; but surely it matters not on whose side that competence comes. We shall have enough, Edward, for happiness, and though I know it would have been more pleasure to yourself if the greater part of our little fortune had been brought by you, yet I am very glad that _I_ have it, as you have not." "But your mother--your guardian, Mary?" said Ned Hayward, still in a doubtful tone. Mary laughed, but with a slight touch of vexation in the tone; and she exclaimed, "I do believe he will not have me, even when I have almost offered myself to him!"