"'A village organist's daughter, by her own confession totally without education. A pretty, delicate young creature with a certain surface refinement, I grant you; but do you think that would stand the wear and tear of life, or counterbalance your humiliation when people asked questions about your wife's antecedents and belongings? People, even the politest people, _will_ ask those questions, George. My dear, dear boy, the thing you were to have done to-day would have been utter ruin to your social existence for the next fifty years. You will never be rich enough or great enough to live down such a marriage.' "'Don't preach to me,' I cried savagely. 'You have broken my heart. Surely that is enough for you.' "I broke away from her as she laid her hand upon my arm--such a shapely hand in a dark grey glove. I remembered even in that moment of anguish and of anger how my dear love had often walked by my side, gloveless, shabbier than a milliner's apprentice. No, she was not of my mother's world; no more was Titania. She belonged to the realm of romance and _féerie_; not to Belgravia or Mayfair. "I ran back to the spot where the hansom still waited for me, jumped in, and told the man to drive to Great Ormond Street. I left my mother standing on the pavement, to find her way back to her carriage as she could, to go where she would. "I knocked at the lodging-house door loud enough to wake the Seven Sleepers. I pushed past the scared maid-servant, and dashed into Martha's parlour. She was sitting with her spectacles on her nose poring over a tradesman's book, and with other books of the same kind on the table before her. "'Martha, this is your doing,' I said. 'You betrayed me to my mother!' "'Oh, Mr. George, forgive your old nurse that loves you as if you were her own flesh and blood. I only did my duty by you and my mistress. It would never have done.' "She called me 'dear,' as in the old nursery days. Tears were streaming down her withered cheeks. "'It was you, then?' "'Yes, it was me, Mr. George, leastways me and Benjamin. We talked it over a long time before he wrote the letter to my mistress at Brighton. Sarah came home from church on Sunday dinner-time. The drawing-rooms were dining out, and the second floor is empty, so there was nothing to hinder Sarah's going to church. She came home at dinner-time, and told me you and Esperanza Campbell had been asked in church--for the third time. You might have knocked me down with a feather. I never thought she could be so artful. I talked it over with Benjamin, and he posted a letter that night.' "'And Miss Marjorum came up from Brighton next morning, and came to see Esperanza?' "'How did you know that, Mr. George?' "'I know Miss Marjorum.'