"I do esteem you, as you term it, more than ever; but I also love you. When a little helpless thing, I took you from your father's arms: I loved you then as a parent would love a child. When Lady Cecil took you under her care, and I saw you but seldom, my heart leaned towards the daughter of my best friend with a brother's love. And when, as I have just said, the sunlight of your smile, and the gentleness of your young girlish voice, dispelled much melancholy from my mind, I thought--no matter what. But now the case is altered--you see in me a mere lump, a deformed creature, a being unseemly to look upon, a wretch----!" "Robin Hays, you wrong yourself," interrupted Barbara; "I do not see you thus, nor think you thus. The raven is not a beautiful bird, nor hath it a sweet voice, yet it was welcomed and beloved of the prophet Elijah." "So it was, Barbara; but why?--because it was _useful_ to him in his hour of need. Think you that, in the time of his triumph and prosperity, he would have taken it to his bosom, as if it had been a dove?" "I do not see why he should not," she said: "God is so good, that he never takes away one beauty without bestowing another; and the raven's glossy wing might be, to some, even more beautiful than the purple plumage of the dove: at all events, so excellent a man would not be chained by mere eye-beauty, which, after all, passeth quickly. Though I think it was very uncourteous of Mr. Fleetword to say, in my hearing, Robin, that the time would come when Mistress Constance would be as plain-favoured as old Dame Compton, whose countenance looks like the worm-eaten cover of Solomon Grundy's Bible." "Ah, Barbara! you are a good girl: but suppose I was as rich as I ought to be before thinking of marrying--and supposing you came to the knowledge of your father, and he agreed--and supposing Mistress Cecil did not say nay--supposing all this----?" Robin paused, and Barbara, with her eyes fixed on the ground, commenced pulling to pieces the rose-bud he had given her. "Supposing all this, Barbara----?" "Well, Robin?" "Do you think, Barbara, you would then--marry me?" "I never thought of marriage, seeing that I am too young, and, withal, too inexperienced; but there is one thing, Robin----" "I knew it," interrupted the Ranger, in one of his sudden bursts of bitterness; "I might easily have known it--Beauty and ugliness!--Fool! fool! to imagine that a girl could look on me without loathing! There--go to your mistress, go to your mistress, and make gay sport of Robin Hays!" The soft eyes of Barbara filled with tears; she made no reply, but prosecuted her attack on the rose-bud so vigorously, that nought but the stem remained in her fingers. "You need not have torn that rose to bits before my face! Ay, trample on its leaves as you do on my heart!--Why do you not go to your mistress?"