“Oh!” It wasn’t a groan, exactly, but it was an intelligible enough expression of the fact that he saw the point and recognized that there was reason in it. “You have seemed to conceal nothing from me that I ought to know concerning yourself, and you were not privileged to keep back such a thing as this from me a moment after—after—well, after you had determined to pay your court to me.” “Its true, it’s true, I know it! But there were circumstances—in—in the way—circumstances which—” She waved the circumstances aside. “Well, you see,” he said, pleadingly, “you seemed so bent on our traveling the proud path of honest labor and honorable poverty, that I was terrified—that is, I was afraid—of—of—well, _you_ know how you talked.” “Yes, I know how I talked. And I also know that before the talk was finished you inquired how I stood as regards aristocracies, and my answer was calculated to relieve your fears.” He was silent a while. Then he said, in a discouraged way: “I don’t see any way out of it. It was a mistake. That is in truth all it was, just a mistake. No harm was meant, no harm in the world. I didn’t see how it might some time look. It is my way. I don’t seem to see far.” The girl was almost disarmed, for a moment. Then she flared up again. “An Earl’s son! Do earls’ sons go about working in lowly callings for their bread and butter?” “God knows they don’t! I have wished they did.” “Do earls’ sons sink their degree in a country like this, and come sober and decent to sue for the hand of a born child of poverty when they can go drunk, profane, and steeped in dishonorable debt and buy the pick and choice of the millionaires’ daughters of America? _You_ an earl’s son! Show me the signs.” p243.jpg (29K) “I thank God I am not able—if those are the signs. But yet I am an earl’s son and heir. It is all I can say. I wish you would believe me, but you will not. I know no way to persuade you.” She was about to soften again, but his closing remark made her bring her foot down with smart vexation, and she cried out: “Oh, you drive all patience out of me! Would you have one believe that you haven’t your proofs at hand, and yet are what you say you are? You do not put your hand in your pocket _now_—for you have nothing there. You make a claim like this, and then venture to travel without credentials. These are simply incredibilities. Don’t you see that, yourself?” He cast about in his mind for a defence of some kind or other—hesitated a little, and then said, with difficulty and diffidence: