He saw Maude’s look of unutterable scorn; a look which revealed her to him in a new and higher light, and inspired him with a more passionate love than he had ever felt for her yet--and at his worst he had loved her. “Maude,” he cried, in a sudden access of mingled rage and despair, “why do you goad me to say these things? I know how detestable I seem to you. And yet, as there is a heaven above me, I have loved you truly from first to last. Pity me if, while I prayed for no better fate than to face the enemy’s guns on an Indian battle-field, I was a coward in social life and dared not brave genteel poverty even for your sake. Pity me if I shrank from thrusting myself between you and a wealthy marriage. I had been poor all my life; and I knew what you have never learnt--the horrors of a gentleman’s poverty. I have smiled at your girlish talk of pretty cottages and tiny suburban gardens; an elegant little drawing-room, in which you and I might spend the winter evenings together with our books and music. The poor gentleman’s cottage is never pretty; the poor gentleman’s drawing-room is never elegant. His wife’s tastes may be ever so simple, his own aspirations may be ever so pure; but poverty countenances no taste, permits no aspiration. His wife is fond of music, perhaps. Heaven help her! she cannot be sure of an hour in which her piano may not be seized by the broker. She delights in flowers; but the nosegays she arranges so gaily to-day may entail a writ for the florist’s account to-morrow. You would have thought me a model of all that is noble and disinterested if I had exposed you to such miseries as these: you think me a scoundrel because I was not selfish enough to say to you, ‘Reject Francis Tredethlyn and a life of elegant ease, and accept my devotion and an existence of penury and trouble.’” “And you ask me now to fulfil my broken promise? Have you inherited a fortune? or how is it that your ideas upon matrimony have altered?” The schemer flushed crimson to the roots of his hair, and then grew deadly pale. For the life of him he could not answer that question. He could not say, “_My_ position is unchanged, but _you_ are rich. Give me your fortune and the heart I did not choose to claim when it was unaccompanied by fortune.” “Had we not better wish each other good morning, Mr. Lowther?” Maude said, after a little pause. “Your visit is ill-timed and most unwelcome. Your presence reminds me of a cruel wrong done to a noble friend, a devoted husband, whose worth I have learned only too late; whom I have loved unconsciously, only to discover the depth of my affection when its object is lost to me for ever.” “You loved your husband!” cried Harcourt, with a cynical laugh; “you seem determined to astonish me to-day. You loved your husband?”