"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—"