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Rh she were resolved that she would not yield, now was the time for her to stand her ground and make her fight.

"Do not go, Fanny—at least not quite yet," she said.

"Well, dear?"

"I want you to stay while I tell Mark. He must not let Lord Lufton come here to-morrow."

"Not let him!" said Mrs. Robarts. Mr. Robarts said nothing, but he felt that his sister was rising in his esteem from minute to minute.

"No; Mark must bid him not come. He will not wish to pain me when it can do no good. Look here, Mark;" and she walked over to her brother, and put both her hands upon his arm. "I do love Lord Lufton. I had no such meaning or thought when I first knew him. But I do love him—I love him dearly—almost as well as Fanny loves you, I suppose. You may tell him so if you think proper—nay, you must tell him so, or he will not understand me. But tell him this as coming from me, that I will never marry him unless his mother asks me."

"She will not do that, I fear," said Mark, sorrowfully.

"No, I suppose not," said Lucy, now regaining all her courage. "If I thought it probable that she should wish me to be her daughter-in-law, it would not be necessary that I should make such a stipulation. It is because she will not wish it—because she would regard me as unfit to—to—to mate with her son. She would hate me, and scorn me; and then he would begin to scorn me, and perhaps would cease to love me. I could not bear her eye upon me if she thought that I had injured her son. Mark, you will go to him now, will you not? and explain this to him—as much of it as is necessary. Tell him that if his mother asks me I will—consent; but that, as I know that she never will, he is to look upon all that he has said as forgotten. With me it shall be the same as though it were forgotten."

Such was her verdict; and so confident were they both of her firmness—of her obstinacy Mark would have called it on any other occasion—that they neither of them sought to make her alter it.

"You will go to him now—this afternoon, will you not?" she said; and Mark promised that he would. He could not but feel that he himself was greatly relieved. Lady Lufton might probably hear that her son had been fool