The Quaker was asking himself many questions. Had he done well to take his girl to this young nobleman's house? Had he done well to take himself there? It had been as it were a sudden disruption in the settled purposes of his life. What had he or his girl to do with lords? And yet he had been pleased. Courtesy always flatters, and flattery is always pleasant. A certain sense of softness had been grateful to him. There came upon him a painful question,--as there does on so many of us, when for a time we make a successful struggle against the world's allurements,--whether in abandoning the delights of life we do in truth get any compensation for them. Would it not after all be better to do as others use? Phoebus as he touches our trembling ear encourages us but with a faint voice. It had been very pleasant,--the soft chairs, the quiet attendance, the well-cooked dinner, the good wines, the bright glasses, the white linen,--and pleasanter than all that silvery tone of conversation to which he was so little accustomed either in King's Court or Paradise Row. Marion indeed was always gentle to him as a dove cooing; but he was aware of himself that he was not gentle in return. Stern truth, expressed shortly in strong language, was the staple of his conversation at home. He had declared to himself all through his life that stern truth and strong language were better for mankind than soft phrases. But in his own parlour in Paradise Row he had rarely seen his Marion bright as she had been at this lord's table. Was it good for his Marion that she should be encouraged to such brightness; and if so, had he been cruel to her to suffuse her entire life with a colour so dark as to admit of no light? Why had her beauty shone so brightly in the lord's presence? He too knew something of love, and had it always present to his mind that the time would come when his Marion's heart would be given to some stranger. He did not think, he would not think, that the stranger had now come;--but would it be well that his girl's future should be affected even as was his own? He argued the points much within himself, and told himself that it could not be well.