“Understand me at once and for ever, Maude,” Lionel Hillary said, sternly; “such a marriage as that can never be. If you were the great heiress people think you, I might gratify this whim, as I have gratified other fancies, foolish and extravagant in their way. But the road I am now treading is by no means too secure under my feet, and I cannot afford to see my only child the wife of a penniless adventurer. I want to see you happy, Maude, but not after a sentimental girl’s notion of happiness. I know what all those pretty theories about a suburban cottage and poverty come to when they are put into practice. I have seen the slipshod maid-of-all-work, and the miserable dinners, and the Kidderminster carpets, and stale bread and rank butter, that belong to love in a cottage. And more than this, Maude, I know that Harcourt Lowther is the very last man to ally himself to a dowerless wife.” “Ah, how little you know him!” Maude murmured, softly. She thought she knew her lover so well herself, and fancied him the most generous and devoted of men because he had given her a few half-guinea bouquets, purchased on credit from a confiding florist. “Ah, dear papa, how little you know him! He is always reproaching me with my fortune, and lamenting the gulf it has made between us. Let me tell him of your difficulties; let me tell him that I am no longer a millionaire’s daughter, that I am free to marry the man I love. Ah, let me tell him----” “Not a word, Maude,” answered Lionel Hillary--“not a word to that man, if you have any love or respect for your father. Remember that I have trusted you with secrets that a man seldom confides to his daughter.” “And your confidence shall be sacred, papa,” Miss Hillary replied, submissively. And thus ended her intercession in favour of Harcourt Lowther. She was fain to be contented, however, remembering the great trouble which had been so near her, and which a merciful hand had lifted away. She was fain to remember, shudderingly, the feverish horror of that night at Brighton, and to think gratefully of Francis Tredethlyn, to whom she owed her father’s rescue. She was grateful to him; but she could not put entirely away from her the sense of shame left by that scene in the study, and Julia Desmond’s passionate reproaches. She could not forget that it was for her sake Francis Tredethlyn had helped her father, and that the burden of a great obligation must rest upon her shoulders until that loan of twenty thousand pounds was repaid. Poor Maude’s unbusiness-like mind entirely ignored any such thing as interest for Mr. Tredethlyn’s money. She only thought of the loan itself, and the question of its repayment was perpetually in her mind. Had she not been the suppliant, at whose suit the money had been lent? and was she not in a manner the actual debtor?