line” of an English nobleman.  The property must be his own,—­or at any rate the life use of it.  He swore to himself over and over again that nothing should induce him to impoverish the family or to leave the general affairs of the house of Scroope worse than he found them.  Much less than half of that which he understood to be the income coming from the estates would suffice for him.  But let his uncle or aunt,—­or his strait-laced methodical brother, say what they would to him, nothing should induce him to make himself a slave to an earldom.

But yet his mind was much confused and his contentment by no means complete.  He knew that there must be a disagreeable scene between himself and his uncle before he returned to Ireland, and he knew also that his uncle could, if he were so minded, stop his present very liberal allowance altogether.  There had been a bargain, no doubt, that he should remain with his regiment for a year, and of that year six months were still unexpired.  His uncle could not quarrel with him for going back to Ireland; but what answer should he make when his uncle asked him whether he were engaged to marry Miss O’Hara,—­as of course he would ask; and what reply should he make when his uncle would demand of him whether he thought such a marriage fit for a man in his position.  He knew that it was not fit.  He believed in the title, in the sanctity of the name, in the mysterious grandeur of the family.  He did not think that an Earl of Scroope ought to marry a girl of whom nothing whatever was known.  The pride of the position stuck to him;—­but it irked him to feel that the sacrifices necessary to support that pride should fall on his own shoulders.

One thing was impossible to him.  He would not desert his Kate.  But he wished to have his Kate, as a thing apart.  If he could have given six months of each year to his Kate, living that yacht-life of which he had spoken, visiting those strange sunny places which his imagination had pictured to him, unshackled by conventionalities, beyond the sound of church bells, unimpeded by any considerations of family,—­and then have migrated for the other six months to his earldom and his estates, to his hunting and perhaps to Parliament, leaving his Kate behind him, that would have been perfect.  And why not?  In the days which must come so soon, he would be his own master.  Who could impede his motions or gainsay his will?  Then he remembered his Kate’s mother, and the glances which would come from the mother’s eyes.  There might be difficulty even though Scroope were all his own.

He was not a villain;—­simply a self-indulgent spoiled young man who had realized to himself no idea of duty in life.  He never once told himself that Kate should be his mistress.  In all the pictures which he drew for himself of a future life everything was to be done for her happiness and for her gratification.  His yacht should be made a floating bower for her delight.  During those six months of the year which,