“I will believe,” she said to herself, “I will believe and trust him. I cannot remember his eyes, his voice, and not think him true. It may be he is not his own master; he is perhaps fettered in some way; I do not, and probably never may know. But for all that I believe he loves me. My love has not been given unsought, though it may be he hardly knew he was seeking it. I will no longer yield to this horrible mortification, this doubt of myself and of him. Come what may, Ralph Severn mid I have loved each other.” And thereupon Marion found peace. Peace indeed of a somewhat hopeless kind, but nevertheless infinitely better than the miserable state of doubt and unrest which had preceded it. And as she sat there alone and silent, dreaming, till even the long, light evening was drawing to a close, she gave the reins to her fancy, in her endeavour to picture to herself the nature of this barrier, which, she felt convinced, stood between herself and Ralph. One theory after another she rejected as untenable; but curiously enough the real obstacle, Ralph’s actual want of means, his dependence on his mother, never once occurred to her. She was not after all intimately acquainted with the family history of the Severns, and naturally enough, seeing Ralph the head of a house, whose possessions were generally spoken of as considerable, the idea of associating poverty with one in his position, would have appeared to her absurd. Suddenly a new solution struck her. Could it be that he was bound in honour, though not in affection (of the latter she was very sure), to his beautiful cousin, Florence Vyse? The more she thought of it, the better it seemed to answer the riddle. Not much of the Altes gossip, so far as the Severns were concerned, had reached her. Her position in the family, and her evident dislike to hearing their affairs discussed, had prevented her hearing much of the tittle-tattle which had been freely circulated about them.