“No;—­no, no; do not say it.”

“But I have said it, and will say it again.  I, poor, penniless, plain simple fool that I am, have been ass enough to love you, Lady Laura Standish; and I brought you up here to-day to ask you to share with me—­my nothingness.  And this I have done on soil that is to be all your own.  Tell me that you regard me as a conceited fool,—­as a bewildered idiot.”

“I wish to regard you as a dear friend,—­both of my own and of my husband,” said she, offering him her hand.

“Should I have had a chance, I wonder, if I had spoken a week since?”

“How can I answer such a question, Mr. Finn?  Or, rather, I will, answer it fully.  It is not a week since we told each other, you to me and I to you, that we were both poor,—­both without other means than those which come to us from our fathers.  You will make your way;—­will make it surely; but how at present could you marry any woman unless she had money of her own?  For me,—­like so many other girls, it was necessary that I should stay at home or marry some one rich enough to dispense with fortune in a wife.  The man whom in all the world I think the best has asked me to share everything with him;—­and I have thought it wise to accept his offer.”

“And I was fool enough to think that you loved me,” said Phineas.  To this she made no immediate answer.  “Yes, I was.  I feel that I owe it you to tell you what a fool I have been.  I did.  I thought you loved me.  At least I thought that perhaps you loved me.  It was like a child wanting the moon;—­was it not?”

“And why should I not have loved you?” she said slowly, laying her hand gently upon his arm.

“Why not?  Because Loughlinter—­”

“Stop, Mr. Finn; stop.  Do not say to me any unkind word that I have not deserved, and that would make a breach between us.  I have accepted the owner of Loughlinter as my husband, because I verily believe that I shall thus do my duty in that sphere of life to which it has pleased God to call me.  I have always liked him, and I will love him.  For you,—­may I trust myself to speak openly to you?”

“You may trust me as against all others, except us two ourselves.”

“For you, then, I will say also that I have always liked you since I knew you; that I have loved you as a friend;—­and could have loved you otherwise had not circumstances showed me so plainly that it would be unwise.”

“Oh, Lady Laura!”

“Listen a moment.  And pray remember that what I say to you now must never be repeated to any ears.  No one knows it but my father, my brother, and Mr. Kennedy.  Early in the spring I paid my brother’s debts.  His affection to me is more than a return for what I have done for him.  But when I did this,—­when I made up my mind to do it, I made up my mind also that I could not allow myself the same freedom of choice which would otherwise have belonged to me.  Will that be sufficient, Mr. Finn?”