"Papa," she said, going closer to him, "we are not children. We are not asking for anything foolish. I would give up all in the world for Marmaduke. I would bear anything for him. I should feel it my richest joy to be with him, at his side, however poor and struggling he was. But of course I understand that could not be. It would not do for him to be hampered with a wife while he can scarcely make his miserable means support himself." As she spoke with a growing impetuosity, her father, who had been holding her hand in his, and looking into her face, turned slightly away, still holding her hand, and leaned a little backwards against the writing-table. "We know all that," she went on. "I have not said a word against it. But now that I have seen him, and understand how miserable he is, chained to work utterly distasteful to him, and without even the most meagre of hopes, I cannot bear it any longer, I cannot, indeed. Why should we not be engaged?" Hearing that she paused for a reply, Mr Miles, after pausing also for a moment, said,-- "You are thinking only of him." "And of whom should I think?" she asked, vehemently. "Perhaps I have been in error: I think I have been in error," said Mr Miles, speaking with a strange humility. "One has no right to live with one's eyes shut. But, Marion, if this be so, I cannot make wrong more wrong. Marmaduke has no prospect of being able to marry for a considerable number of years, unless, indeed, this shadowy hope to which he clings of Mr Tregennas--" "It ought not to be shadowy. It is disgraceful that he should not say more. Papa, you must write and press this upon him." "I!" "Yes, indeed! There is no one else." "This is simply absurd, Marion," said Mr Miles with some anger. But he had given her an advantage, which she was resolved to use even to ungenerosity. "You said you had been unjust to Marmaduke--" "Not to him, Marion." "He and I are one in such a matter, papa." Ah, there was the strangeness of it! His child's life had seemed to him no more than an undeveloped bud, some day to expand, but as yet folded securely within its sheath, and suddenly it had shot apart from, was almost opposed to them all. It was a thing so strange that the father, looking at the woman, thought only of the child, and took to his own blindness greater blame than it deserved. "Well," he said, sighing, "it is possible, as you say, that I have not acted in the best way for Marmaduke, or indeed for any one." "And you will write?" "To tell the man he is to make Marmaduke his heir!" "O, he has said it already. Tell him that he must be kinder to him, poor fellow!--that he is thrown away in his present position--"