But the wheels of his thought-chariot, self moved, were rushing, and here was no goal at which to halt or turn; for, feeling thus, where was his faith in her principles? how now was he treating the truth of her nature? where now were his convictions of the genuineness of her professions? Where were those principles, that truth, those professions, if after all she would listen to a marquis and would not listen to a groom? To suppose such a thing was to wrong her grievously. To herald his suit with his rank would be to insult her, declaring that he regarded her theories of humanity as wordy froth. And what a chance of proving her truth would he not deprive her of if, as he approached her, he called on the marquis to supplement the man!--But what, then, was the man, fisherman or marquis, to dare _even himself_ to such a glory as the Lady Clementina? This much of a man, at least, answered his waking dignity, that he could not condescend to be accepted as Malcolm, marquis of Lossie, knowing he would have been rejected as Malcolm MacPhail, fisherman and groom. Accepted as marquis, he would for ever be haunted with the _channering_ question whether she would have accepted him as groom. And if in his pain he were one day to utter it, and she in her honesty were to confess she would not, must she not then fall prone from her pedestal in his imagination? Could he, then, in love for the woman herself, condescend as marquis to marry one who _might_ not have married him as any something else he could honestly have been under the all-enlightening sun? Ah, but again, was that fair to her yet? Might she not see in the marquis the truth and worth which the blinding falsehoods of society prevented her from seeing in the groom? Might not a lady--he tried to think of a lady in the abstract--might not a lady in marrying a marquis--a lady to whom from her own position a marquis was just a man on the level--marry in him the man he was, and not the marquis he seemed? Most certainly, he answered: he must not be unfair. Not the less, however, did he shrink from the thought of taking her prisoner under the shield of his marquisate, beclouding her nobility, and depriving her of the rare chance of shining forth as the sun in the splendor of womanly truth. No: he would choose the greater risk of losing her for the chance of winning her greater.