After a time I said, hesitatingly, "I scarcely presume to condole with you, Lady Ellinor, yet, believe me, few things ever shocked me like the death you allude to. I trust Miss Trevanion's health has not much suffered. Shall I not see her before I leave England?" Lady Ellinor fixed her keen bright eyes searchingly on my countenance, and perhaps the gaze satisfied her; for she held out her hand to me with a frankness almost tender, and said "Had I had a son, the dearest wish of my heart had been to see you wedded to my daughter." I started up; the blood rushed to my cheeks, and then left me pale as death. I looked reproachfully at Lady Ellinor, and the word "cruel!" faltered on my lips. "Yes," continued Lady Ellinor, mournfully, "that was my real thought, my impulse of regret, when I first saw you. But as it is, do not think me too hard and worldly if I quote the lofty old French proverb, Noblesse oblige. Listen to me, my young friend: we may never meet again, and I would not have your father's son think unkindly of me, with all my faults. From my first childhood I was ambitious,--not, as women usually are, of mere wealth and rank, but ambitious as noble men are, of power and fame. A woman can only indulge such ambition by investing it in another. It was not wealth, it was not rank, that attracted me to Albert Trevanion: it was the nature that dispenses with the wealth and commands the rank. Nay," continued Lady Ellinor, in a voice that slightly trembled, "I may have seen in my youth, before I knew Trevanion, one [she paused a moment, and went on hurriedly]--one who wanted but ambition to have realized my ideal. Perhaps even when I married--and it was said for love--I loved less with my whole heart than with my whole mind. I may say this now, for now every beat of this pulse is wholly and only true to him with whom I have schemed and toiled and aspired; with whom I have grown as one; with whom I have shared the struggle, and now partake the triumph, realizing the visions of my youth." Again the light broke from the dark eyes of this grand daughter of the world, who was so superb a type of that moral contradiction,--an ambitious woman. "I cannot tell you," resumed Lady Ellinor, softening, "how pleased I was when you came to live with us. Your father has perhaps spoken to you of me and of our first acquaintance!" Lady Ellinor paused abruptly, and surveyed me as she paused. I was silent. "Perhaps, too, he has blamed me?" she resumed, with a heightened color. "He never blamed you, Lady Ellinor!"