there should be no more law."
"Thank you, my lord."
"Your mother says that she has suffered much. I am sure she has suffered. I trust that all that is over now. I have come here to-day more to say that on my own behalf than anything else." A shadow of a shade of disappointment, the slightest semblance of a cloud, passed across her heart as she heard this. But it was well. She could not have married him, even if he had wished it, and now, as it seemed, that difficulty was over. Her mother and those lawyers had been mistaken, and it was well that he should tell her so at once.
"It is very good of you, my lord."
"I would not have you think of me that I could come to you hoping that you would promise me your love before I had shown you whether I had loved you or not."
"No, my lord." She hardly understood him now, – whether he intended to propose himself as a suitor for her hand or not.
"You, Lady Anna, are your father's heir. I am your cousin, Earl Lovel, as poor a peer as there is in England. They tell me that we should marry because you are rich and I am an earl."
"So they tell me; – but that will not make it right."
"I would not have it so, even if I dared to think that you would agree to it."
"Oh, no, my lord; nor would I."
"But if you could learn to love me – "
"No, my lord; – no."
"Do not answer me yet, my cousin. If I swore that I loved you, – loved you so soon after seeing you, – and loved you, too, knowing you to be so wealthy an heiress – "
"Ah, do not talk of that."
"Well; – not of that. But if I said that I loved you, you would not believe me."
"It would not be true, my lord."
"But I know that I shall love you. You will let me try? You are very lovely, and they tell me you are sweet-humoured. I can believe well that you are sweet and pleasant. You will let me try to love you, Anna?"
"No, my lord."
"Must it be so, so soon?"
"Yes, my lord."
"Why that? Is it because we are strangers to each other? That may be cured; – if not quickly, as I would have it cured, slowly and by degrees; slowly as you can wish, if only I may come where you shall be. You have said that we may be friends."
"Oh yes, – friends, I hope."
"Friends at least. We are born cousins."
"Yes, my lord."
"Cannot you call me by my name? Cousins, you know, do so. And remember this, you will have and can have no nearer cousin than I am. I am bound at least to be a brother to you."
"Oh, be my brother!"
"That, – or more than that. I would fain be more than that. But I will be that, at least. As I came to you, before I saw you, I felt that whenever we knew each other I could not be less to you than that. If I am your friend, I must be your best friend, – as being, though poor, the head of your family. The Lovels should at least love each other; and cousins may love, even though they should not love enough to be man and wife."
"I will love you so always."
"Enough to be my wife?"
"Enough to be your dear cousin, – your loving sister."
"So it shall be, – unless it can be more. I would not ask you for more now. I would not wish you to give more now. But think of me, and ask yourself whether you can dare to give yourself to me altogether."
"I cannot dare, my lord."
"You would not call your brother, lord. My name is Frederic. But Anna, dear Anna," – and then he took her unresisting hand, – "you shall not be asked for more now. But cousins, new-found cousins, who love each other, and will stand by each other for help and aid against the world, may surely kiss, – as would a brother and a sister. You will not grudge me a kiss." Then she put up her cheek innocently, and he kissed it gently, – hardly with a lover's kiss. "I will leave you now," he said, still holding her hand. "But tell your mother thus: – that she shall no longer be troubled by lawyers at the suit of her cousin Frederic. She is to me the Countess Lovel, and she shall be treated by me with the honour suited to her rank." And so he left the house without seeing the Countess again.
CHAPTER XI.
IT IS TOO LATE
The Countess had resolved that she would let their visitor depart without saying a word to him. Whatever might be the result of the interview, she was aware that she could not improve it by asking any question from the young lord, or by hearing any account of it from him. The ice had been broken, and it would now be her object to have her daughter invited down to Yoxham as soon as possible. If once the Earl's friends could be brought to be eager for the match on his account, as was she on her daughter's behalf, then probably the thing might be done. For herself, she expected no invitation, no immediate comfort, no tender treatment, no intimate familiar cousinship. She had endured hitherto, and would be contented to endure, so that triumph might come at last. Nor did she question her daughter very closely, anxious as she was to learn the truth.
Could she have heard every word that had been spoken she would have been sure of success. Could Daniel Thwaite have heard every word he would have been sure that the girl was about to be false to him. But the girl herself believed herself to have been true. The man had been so soft with her, so tender, so pleasant, – so loving with his sweet cousinly offers of affection, that she could not turn herself against him. He had been to her eyes beautiful, noble, – almost divine. She knew of herself that she could not be his wife, – that she was not fit to be his wife, – because she had given her troth to the tailor's son. When her cousin touched her check with his lips she remembered that she had submitted to be kissed by one with whom her noble relative could hold no fellowship whatever. A feeling of degradation came upon her, as though by contact with this young man she was suddenly awakened to a sense of what her own rank demanded from her. When her mother had spoken to her of what she owed to her family, she had thought only of all the friendship that she and her mother had received from her lover and his father. But when Lord Lovel told her what she was, – how she should ever be regarded by him as a dear cousin, – how her mother should be accounted a countess, and receive from him the respect due to her rank, – then she could understand how unfitting were a union between the Lady Anna Lovel and Daniel Thwaite, the journeyman tailor. Hitherto Daniel's face had been noble in her eyes, – the face of a man who was manly, generous, and strong. But after looking into the eyes of the young Earl, seeing how soft was the down upon his lips, how ruddy the colour of his cheek, how beautiful was his mouth with its pearl-white teeth, how noble the curve of his nostrils, after feeling the softness of his hand, and catching the sweetness of his breath, she came to know what it might have been to be wooed by such a one as he.
But not on that account did she meditate falseness. It was settled firm as fate. The dominion of the tailor over her spirit had lasted in truth for years. The sweet, perfumed graces of the young nobleman had touched her senses but for a moment. Had she been false-minded she had not courage to be false. But in truth she was not false-minded. It was to her, as that sunny moment passed across her, as to some hard-toiling youth who, while roaming listlessly among the houses of the wealthy, hears, as he lingers on the pavement of a summer night, the melodies which float upon the air from the open balconies above him. A vague sense of unknown sweetness comes upon him, mingled with an irritating feeling of envy that some favoured son of Fortune should be able to stand over the shoulders of that singing syren, while he can only listen with intrusive ears from the street below. And so he lingers and is envious, and for a moment curses his fate, – not knowing how weary may be the youth who stands, how false the girl who sings. But he does not dream that his life is to be altered for him, because he has chanced to hear the daughter of a duchess warble through a window. And so it was with this girl. The youth was very sweet to her, intensely sweet when he told her that he would be a brother, perilously sweet when he bade her not to grudge him one kiss. But she knew that she was not as he was. That she had lost the right, could