“Lady Montressor, you also are influenced by a worldly education. You have all the prejudices of caste. You think entirely too much of ‘family,’ ‘position,’ and ‘fame,’ more than Lord Montressor does by half. I tell you, that next to _duty_, ‘love is the greatest good in the world,’ and Lord Montressor knows it. Oh, Madam, how can you disregard the great love he bears you?” said Barbara, pleadingly. “_I_ disregard it—oh, Heaven!” exclaimed the lady, growing paler than before. “I see you do not really do so! I see the struggle in your mind! Oh, Madam, yield to your simpler and better nature! Make him and yourself happy! Come, let me send into the forest and bring him here to plead his own cause!” prayed Barbara, with earnest eloquence. “Miss Brande, no! if you would not have me die before you—no! You do not know what you ask. You do not appreciate to how much of humiliation an alliance with me would subject him at home! You do not know England.” “Then _what_ can I do for you? And why have you uselessly harrowed me with this terrible story?” demanded Barbara, more in sorrow than in anger at what her simple, honest, straightforward nature looked upon as the unnecessary self-torturing of a morbid fastidiousness. “Not to distress you, needlessly, Miss Brande; but since Lord Montressor has not yet discovered the clue to my retreat, to beseech your assistance in still concealing it from him. And this assistance that I pray is only of a negative character, only your forbearance, only that you refrain from mentioning in his presence the name of your tenant. Miss Brande, will you oblige me in this matter?” “I will be guided by your wishes, Lady Montressor.” “Another thing I must entreat—that you will never call me again ‘Lady Montressor;’ nor think of me as the wife of Lord Montressor. It is a name and a position that I have renounced. Nay, that I am not even sure that I ever had a just right to wear! For, look you, when I left England the question of the legality of my childish marriage was still pending before the Spiritual Court of Arches. And law is such an uncertain thing, you know, that the decision of the bench of Bishops may have been different and quite opposite to that opinion advanced by the first lawyer of the day, Lord Dazzleright, who denied the validity of the first marriage, and affirmed the legality of the second. Therefore, you perceive that the only name to which I feel sure of possessing an unquestioned claim, is that one bestowed upon me in baptism, and which marriage does not change—Estelle—call me Mrs. Estel.”