"We follow not our leader, and we hide the light. Addison hath represented life under the image of a bridge, over which men are perpetually passing. But the bridge is set everywhere with hidden holes and pitfalls, so that he who steps into one straightway falls through and is drowned. We are not always drowned by the pitfalls of life, but, which is as bad, we are maimed and broken, so that for the rest of our course we go halt." "I pray, my lord," I said, "that you may escape these pitfalls, and press on with the light before you to the goal of your most honourable ambition." "It is too late," he said sadly. "Miss Kitty, you see in me the most wretched of mortals, who might, I would sometimes venture to think, have become the most happy." "You wretched, Lord Chudleigh?"--oh, beating heart!--"you wretched? Of all men you should be the most happy." "I have tried," he said, "to escape from the consequences of a folly--nay, a crime. But it is impossible. I am fast bound and tied." He took my hand and held it, while he added: "I may not say what I would: I may not even think, or hope, or dream of what might have been." "Might have been, my lord?" "Which cannot, now, ever be. Kitty, I thought after I discovered that it was impossible that I would not return any more to Epsom Wells; in the country, or away on foreign travel, I might in time forget your face, your voice, your eyes--the virtues and graces which sit so well in a form so charming--the elevated soul----" "My lord! my lord!" I cried, "spare me----Yet," I added, "tell me all that is in your mind. If I cannot rid you of your burden, at least I may soothe your sorrow." "The matter," he replied, "lies in a few words, Kitty. I love you, and I may not ask you to be my wife." I was silent for a while. He stood before me, his face bent over mine. "Why not?" I asked. "Because I have been a fool--nay, worse than a fool, a knave; because I am tied by bonds which I cannot break: and I am unworthy of so much goodness and virtue." "Oh!" I cried, "you know not. How can you know? I am none of the things which you imagine in me. I am a poor and weak girl; if you knew me you would surely think so too. I cannot bear that you should think me other than what I am." "Why, my angel, your very modesty and your tears are the proof that you are all I think, and more." "No," I cried. "If I told you all: if I could lay bare my very soul to you, I think that you could"--I was going to add, "love me no longer," but I caught myself up in time--"that you could no longer think of me as better, but rather as worse, than other girls." "You know," he said, "that I love you, Kitty. You have known that for some time--have you not?" "Yes, my lord," I replied humbly; "I have known it, and have felt my own unworthiness. Oh, so unworthy, so unworthy am I that I have wept tears of shame." "Nay--nay," he said. "It is I who am unworthy. My dear, there is nothing you could tell me which would make me love you less."