After this they were silent for a considerable space, and the picture made progress. Then Harry began again, summing up his disadvantages: "Is it fair to ask her? Here am I, of no account as to family or fortune, and under a cloud as to the future, if my mother and Carnegie are justified in their warnings--and sometimes it comes over me that they are--why, Christie, what have I to offer her? Nothing, nothing but my presumptuous self." "Let her be judge: women have to put up with a little presumption in a lover." "Would it not be great presumption? Consider her relations and friends, her rank and its concomitants. I cannot tell how much she has learnt to value them, how necessary they have become to her. Lady Latimer, who was good to me until the other day, is shutting her doors against me now as too contemptible." "Not at all. The despotic old lady shuts her doors against you because she is afraid of you." "What have I to urge except that I love her?" "The best of pleas. Don't fear too much. Give her leave to love you by avowing your love--that is what a girl waits for: if you let her go back to Woldshire without an understanding between yourselves, she will think you care for your own pride more than for her." "I wish she were little Bessie at Beechhurst again, and all her finery blown to the winds. I have not seen her for five days." "That must be your own fault. You don't want an ambassador? If you do, there's the post." Harry was silent again. He was chiefly raising objections for the pleasure of hearing them contradicted; of course he was not aware of half the objections that might have been cited against him as an aspirant to the hand of Miss Fairfax. In the depth of his heart there was a tenacious conviction that Bessie Fairfax loved him best in the world--with a love that had grown with her growth and strengthened with her strength, and would maintain itself independent of his failure or success in life. But oh, that word _failure_! It touched him with a dreadful chill. He turned pale at it, and resolutely averted his mind from the idea. He left young Christie with as little ceremony as he had rejoined him, and walked home to Brook, entering the garden from the wood. The first sight that met him was Bessie Fairfax standing alone under the beeches. At the moment he thought it was an illusion, for she was all in bluish-gray amongst the shadows; but at the sound of the gate she turned quickly and came forward to meet him. "I was just beginning to feel disappointed," said she impulsively. "Lady Latimer brought me over to say good-bye, and we were told you had gone to Littlemire. She is in the sitting-room with your mother. I came out here."