What was there missing in him that a girl should require? It was so that she had asked herself the question. As far as manners were concerned, this man was a gentleman. She was quite sure of that. Whether proletary or not, there was nothing about him to offend the taste of the best-born of ladies. That he was better educated than any of the highly-bred young men she saw around her, she was quite sure. He had more to talk about than others. Of his birth and family she knew nothing, but rather prided herself in knowing nothing, because of that doctrine of hers that a man is to be estimated only by what he is himself, and not at all by what he may derive from others. Of his personal appearance, which went far with her, she was very proud. He was certainly a handsome young man, and endowed with all outward gifts of manliness: easy in his gait, but not mindful of it, with motions of his body naturally graceful but never studied, with his head erect, with a laugh in his eye, well-made as to his hands and feet. Neither his intellect nor his political convictions would have recommended a man to her heart, unless there had been something in the outside to please her eye, and from the first moment in which she had met him he had never been afraid of her,--had ventured when he disagreed from her to laugh at her, and even to scold her. There is no barrier in a girl's heart so strong against love as the feeling that the man in question stands in awe of her. She had taken some time before she had given him her answer, and had thought much of the perils before her. She had known that she could not divest herself of her rank. She had acknowledged to herself that, whether it was for good or bad, a Marquis's daughter could not be like another girl. She owed much to her father, much to her brothers, something even to her stepmother. But was the thing she proposed to do of such a nature as to be regarded as an evil to her family? She could see that there had been changes in the ways of the world during the last century,--changes continued from year to year. Rank was not so high as it used to be,--and in consequence those without rank not so low. The Queen's daughter had married a subject. Lords John and Lords Thomas were every day going into this and the other business. There were instances enough of ladies of title doing the very thing which she proposed to herself. Why should a Post Office clerk be lower than another?