He reviewed every minute incident from the beginning of his acquaintance with Katherine that night not so very long ago at the house of Gerard Strobridge. She had admitted that it was she herself who had desired this meeting after she had heard him speak. That proved that she had been drawn to him even then. And how attractive she had appeared, how cultivated and polished, how clever and refined! And to think that such achievement was the result of steadfastness of purpose! A will to compass an ideal against extraordinary odds. An intelligence great enough to realise that facts alone count, and that no assumption of the rights of ladyhood, or demonstration in words, would convince anyone, but only the inward reality of fineness of soul directing outward action. How much more meritorious and to be respected was her achievement then than if these things had been her natural heritage! She had obtained a state of perfection through deliberate intention in a far greater degree than anyone he knew but Seraphim. Her every idea, thought, expression and point of view, accorded exactly with his own. Her sense of duty was paramount. Her level-headedness, and her common sense, and her balance were such as he had never before seen in woman. And she was young and beautiful, and in perfect health. No nervous fancies beset that evenly poised brain. Suddenly, as he stared up into the deep blue starlit sky, it seemed that the scales fell from his eyes, and fog was lifted from his inner vision of the soul. This beloved creature--daughter of an auctioneer and granddaughter of a butcher--was truly and really an aristocrat in the purest and truest sense of the term. And just because he could trace his pedigree back for countless generations, who was he to stand aside and not give her her due when her spirit and character were so infinitely above him? (Thus love engenders humility in noble hearts!) Where in the whole world could he find one so worthy to share his great name and great estate? He laughed aloud in glee! It would not be giving way to temptation for personal joy to think of her as his Duchess, but it would be conferring the greatest honour upon his house that it had ever known. He marvelled at his blindness--marvelled at his pitifully conventional point of view. How had it ever weighed with him a second? How had he not realised at once the utter paltriness of the designation of aristocrat unless the inner being carries out what that word is intended to convey?