"Charley," said the girl, suddenly tilting her chair on to its front legs, and drumming with her right hand upon the table; "look here. You can't have every thing, you know, and it's better to make the running over open ground, no matter how heavy, than to dash at a thick hedge where there may be water and Lord knows what on the other side. Don't hurry it so, Charley; you'll get pounded without knowing it, and then there'll be nothing to pull you through. You can't expect every thing in a wife, you know, Charley. If you got money, you couldn't look for rank, you know, eh?" "Why, how you do talk about it, old lady!" said Beresford, flicking the ash off his cigar. "No; I'm not exacting. I wouldn't care about her pedigree, so long as she was well weighted." "That's right; of course not, Charley! I should think you'd find some one, Charley; not grand, you know, but good and honest, and all that. Not very beautiful either, perhaps, but not ugly, you know; and one who'd love you, Charley, and be true to you, and take care of you, and make you a good wife." "Yes, I know, and all that sort of thing; but where is she to come from?" "You might find such a one, Charley, where you never looked for it, perhaps; one who could bring you a little fortune, all honest money, and who could tell you of her past life, which you never dreamed of, and need not be ashamed of. There might be such a one, Charley!" She had slid from her chair to the ground, and knelt, with her hands on his knees, looking eagerly into his face. Her eyes gleamed with excitement she had pushed her hair back from her forehead, and her lips were parted in eager anticipation of his words. They came at length, very slowly. At first he turned pale, and caught his breath for an instant; then gently lifted her hands, and muttered between his teeth, "It's impossible, Kate; it can't be!" "Impossible!" "It can't be, I tell you. What would--there, you don't understand these things, and I can't explain. It's impossible! I was a fool to start the subject. Now I must go. Good-by, child; write me a line from Scarborough; they'll forward it from the office. Won't you say good-by?" He gripped her cold, passive hand, and two minutes afterwards she heard the sound of his departing horse's feet on the carriage-drive. For a while Kate Mellon stood motionless, then stamped her foot violently, and sank into a chair, covering her face with her hands, through which the tears welled slowly. Rousing herself at length, she hurried to a writing-table, pulled out a gaudily-decorated _papier-mâché_ blotting-book, and commenced scrawling a letter. She wrote hurriedly, passionately, until she had covered the sheet, running her gold pen-holder through the tangled mass of hair at the back of her head, and twisting a stick of sealing-wax with her teeth the while. The letter finished, she skimmed through it hastily, put it in an envelope, and directed it to "F. Churchill, Esq., _Statesman_ Office, E.C."