Julia withdrew herself from the supporting arm. “Ah, Mr. Tredethlyn,” she said, in an icy kind of voice, “this is the bitterest insult of all. The Desmonds do not marry for money; they only marry where they are beloved, and can love again.” “How can I expect that you can love me?” asked Francis. “Do you think I can forget that I am an ignorant boor, suddenly thrown amongst people whose habits of life, whose very thoughts, are strange to me?” “And you would marry a woman without so much as asking for her love?” “I would ask for her friendship and her fidelity. I shouldn’t care to exact an uneven bargain, Miss Desmond; and I doubt if I could give much more myself,” the young man answered, rather coldly. But at the sound of a stifled sob from Julia he changed his tone all at once; a thousand generous impulses were stirred in him by the aspect of her distress. He was nothing more than a child in the hands of this brilliant young Irishwoman. “Dear Miss Desmond,” he cried, “I seem destined to offend and grieve you. If you will share my fortune, if you will accept any best friendship and fidelity, my whole life shall prove to you how much I admire and respect you. If you reject my offer, I can only say----” But Julia did not allow him to finish the sentence, which she foresaw would be expressive of complete resignation to her adverse decision. “Oh, Francis,” she exclaimed, “you offer me your _fortune_!” There was something sublime in her contemptuous enunciation of this last word. “You ask me to accept your friendship, when I have been weak and mad enough to LOVE YOU.” She was not Rachel any longer; she was Madame Dorval, all melting tenderness and womanly pathos. She covered her face with her hands, and then, with something between a sob and a shudder, rushed suddenly from the room, and hurried along the dusky staircase and passages to her own apartment. The candles were lighted on the dressing-table; but there was no intrusive handmaiden to annoy Miss Desmond by her watchful glances, her mute interrogation. Julia looked at her reflection in the glass, and saw herself flushed and triumphant, with traces of tears upon her cheeks. “And my eyes are really wet,” she thought; “but then the chance was such a good one, and so nearly lost. What a good, simple-hearted fellow he is! and how happy any reasonable woman might be with him--and thirty thousand a year! Ah, Maude Hillary! it was very pretty and childish and nice of you, coming to wake me out of my sleep on your last birthday, to show me the set of diamonds and opals papa had bribed your maid to slip under your pillow before you awoke; but _I_ will show you diamonds before long that shall make you ashamed of that birthday trumpery.”