'
'Then what are you?'
'Ronald Hollister, Earl of Hartfield, and your adoring lover!'
Mary gave a cry of surprise, a cry of distress even.
'Oh, that is too dreadful!' she exclaimed; 'grandmother will be so
unhappy. She had set her heart upon Lesbia marrying Lord Hartfield, the
son of the man _she_ loved.'
'I got wind of her wish more than a year ago,' said Hartfield, 'from
your brother; and he and I hatched a little plot between us. He told me
Lesbia was not worthy of his friend's devotion--told me that she was
vain and ambitious--that she had been educated to be so. I determined to
come and try my fate. I would try to win her as plain John Hammond. If
she was a true woman, I told myself, vanity and ambition would be blown
to the four winds, provided I could win her love. I came, I saw her; and
to see was to love her. God knows I tried honestly to win her; but I
had sworn to myself that I would woo her as John Hammond, and I did not
waver in my resolution--no, not when a word would have turned the scale.
She liked me, I think, a little; but she did not like the notion of an
obscure life as the wife of a hardworking professional man.
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