"But it is the man in the making that I want," said Sally, rising to her feet, and taking my hand in hers. "O Aunt Matoaca, I love him!" The little lady to whom she appealed bent slowly forward in the firelight, her face, which had grown old and wan, looking up at us, as we stood there, hand in hand, on the rug. "I am distressed for you, Sally," she said, "but when it becomes a question of honour, love must be sacrificed." "Honour!" cried Sally, and there was a passionate anger in her voice, "but I _do_ honour him." My hand was in hers, and she stooped and kissed it before turning to Miss Matoaca, who had drawn herself up, thin and straight as a blade, in her chair. "You are right," I said, "to tell me that I am unworthy of your niece--for I am. I am plain and rough beside her, but, at least, I am honest. What I offer her is a man's heart, and a man's hand that has dealt cleanly and fairly with both men and women." Until the words were uttered my pride had blinded me to my cruelty. Then I saw two bright red spots appear in Miss Matoaca's thin cheeks, and I asked myself in anger if the General or George Bolingbroke would have been guilty of so deep a thrust? Did she dream that I knew her story? And were those pathetic red spots the outward sign of a stab in her gentle bosom? "There are many different kinds of merit, Mr. Starr," she returned, with a wistful dignity. "I do not undervalue that of character, but I do not think that even a good character can atone for the absence of family inheritance--of the qualities which come from refined birth and breeding. We have had the misfortune in our family of one experience of an ill-assorted and tragic marriage," she added. "We must never forget poor Sarah's misery and ours, Sister Matoaca," remarked Miss Mitty, from the opposite side of the hearth; "and yet Harry Mickleborough's father was a most respectable man, and the teacher of Greek in a college." All the pity went out of me, and I felt only a blind sense of irritation at the artificial values, the feminine lack of grasp, the ignorance of the true proportions of life. I grew suddenly hard, and something of this hardness passed into my voice when I spoke. "I stand or fall by own worth and by that alone," I returned, "and your niece, if she marries me, will stand or fall as I do. I ask no favours, no allowances, even from her." Withdrawing her hand from mine, Sally took a single step forward, and stood with her eyes on the faces that showed so starved and wan in the firelight.