"You had no difficulty in believing, on no evidence at all, that he had seduced her," continued George, quietly. "Now I can assume the latter is utterly false; the former is distinctly true. You had better be careful how you act towards this young lady, Mrs. Derinzy, for your son loves her--loves her well enough to have been unworldly, and manly enough to implore her to become his wife, and to be stricken well-nigh to death by her refusal, and the sentence of final separation between them pronounced by her. When your son fell down at his club in the fit from which it seemed at first probable he would never rally, he was struck down by a letter from Miss Stafford, in which she told him he should see her no more." "What was her reason? Did she not care for him?" asked Mrs. Derinzy, almost in a whisper. She was subdued by the earnestness of George's manner, and some womanly feelings, which, though tepid, still had a place in her worldly scheming nature, were touched. It was fortunate for the zeal and sincerity of George's advocacy of the cause of the loves of Paul and Daisy, that he was entirely ignorant of the Orpington episode. He had no actual acquaintance with the other motives which had influenced Miss Stafford to reject Paul's proposal of marriage, or the arguments with which she enforced them. He had a general idea of the ground she had taken up throughout--the ground of their social inequality, the inadequacy of means, and the inevitable grief to which a marriage contracted under those grave disadvantages must come; and he had, on the whole, approved her views, until he had beheld their practical effect. He detailed to Mrs. Derinzy his conviction concerning Miss Stafford's reasons, and stoutly maintained that those reasons were quite consistent with a disinterested attachment to Paul, and with a sound and elevated sense of self-respect. To this view of the subject Paul's mother was entirely indifferent. When it was made plain to her--as it was with irresistible clearness, which not even the obstinacy of an illiberal woman sitting in judgment on a social inferior could resist--that Miss Stafford's character was unblemished, in the ordinary sense of the phrase, she was obliged to shift her ground; and thenceforth her anxiety was to be convinced that Daisy had really refused to marry her son, and to be assured that she was likely to maintain her resolution. In her solicitude on this point, Mrs. Derinzy was even ready to praise Miss Stafford.