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Rh nevertheless, I can not allow her to lead me in all things. Were I to do so, I should cease to be a man."

"Where can you find any one who will counsel you so truly?"

"But, nevertheless, I must rule myself. I do not know whether my suspicions may be perfectly just, but I fancy that she has created this estrangement between you and me. Has it not been so?"

"Certainly not by speaking to me," said Lucy, blushing ruby-red through every vein of her deep-tinted face. But, though she could not command her blood, her voice was still under her control—her voice and her manner.

"But has she not done so? You, I know, will tell me nothing but the truth."

"I will tell you nothing on this matter, Lord Lufton, whether true or false. It is a subject on which it does not concern me to speak."

"Ah! I understand," he said; and, rising from his chair, he stood against the chimney-piece with his back to the fire. "She can not leave me alone to choose for myself my own friends, and my own—" but he did not fill up the void.

"But why tell me this, Lord Lufton?"

"No, I am not to choose my own friends, though they be among the best and purest of God's creatures. Lucy, I can not think that you have ceased to have a regard for me. That you had a regard for me I am sure."

She felt that it was almost unmanly of him thus to seek her out, and hunt her down, and then throw upon her the whole weight of the explanation that his coming thither made necessary. But, nevertheless, the truth must be told, and with God's help she would find strength for the telling of it.

"Yes, Lord Lufton, I had a regard for you—and have. By that word you mean something more than the customary feeling of acquaintance which may ordinarily prevail between a gentleman and lady of different families, who have known each other so short a time as we have done?"

"Yes, something much more," said he, with energy.

"Well, I will not define the much—something closer than that."

"Yes, and warmer, and dearer, and more worthy of two human creatures who value each other's minds and hearts."