"Good-bye, Rachel," said the lord, coming into her room the day but one after this. Her father was not with her, as she had elected to be alone when she would bid her adieu to her intended husband. "This is very good of you to come to me." "Of course I came." "Because you were good. You need not have come unless you had wished it. I had so spoken to you as to justify you in staying away. My voice is gone, and I can only squeak at you in this broken treble." "Your voice would not have mattered at all." "Ah, but it has mattered to me. What made you want to marry me?" "Your beauty quite as much as your voice," said the lord. "And that has gone too. Everything I had has gone. It is melancholy! No, my lord," she said, interrupting him when he attempted to contradict her, "there is not a word more to be said about it. Voice and beauty, such as it was, and the little wit, are all gone. I did believe in my voice myself, and therefore I felt myself fitting to marry you. I could have left a name behind me if my voice had remained. But, in truth, my lord, it was not fitting. I did not love you." "That, indeed!" "As far as I know myself, I did not love you. You have heard me speak of Frank Jones,--a man who can only wear two clean shirts a week because he has been so boycotted by those wretched Irish as to be able to afford no more. I would take him with one shirt to-morrow, if I could get him. One does not know why one loves a person. Of course he's handsome, and strong, and brave. I don't think that has done it, but I just got the fancy into my head, and there it is still. And he with his two shirts, working every day himself with his own hands to earn something for his father, would not marry me because I was a singing girl and took wages. He would not have another shirt to be washed with my money. Oh, that the chance were given to me to go and wash it for him with my own hands!" Lord Castlewell sat through the interview somewhat distraught, as well he might be; but when it was over, and he had taken his leave and kissed her forehead, as he went home in his cab, he told himself that he had got through that little adventure very well. CHAPTER XLIII. MR. MOSS IS FINALLY ANSWERED.