Mary Clifford looked up in his face, and a varying light played in her eyes, as if, at one moment, it was about to break forth sportively, and at another would have drowned itself out in tears.
"I must change, Hayward!" she said at length, with a bright smile upon her lip, "indeed you ask too much. How can you expect that I should live in the same house with you, and know that you love me, without showing in some degree what is passing in my own breast?"
"Mary! Mary!" he exclaimed, laying his hand upon her arm, and gazing in her face, "you would not--oh, I am sure you would not trifle with me--"
"Not for the world," she answered. "Edward, I am incapable of trifling with any man; but with you, to whom I owe so much, it would be base indeed!"
"But the great disparity of fortune," said her lover, with the shade again upon his brow. "Oh, Mary, how can it ever be? You, I have heard, are wealthy--they call you 'the heiress'--and I know myself to be poor. Are you aware--surely I told you, that all I had saved out of the wreck of my father's fortune, only amounted at first to--"
"Will you pain me?--Do you wish to grieve me?" asked Mary Clifford, "if not, do not mention such matters as in any way likely to affect my feelings or conduct; and yet I do not wish you to consider me as a romantic girl, for I am not. I have always thought that a competence must be possessed to render the lives of any two people happy; but surely it matters not on whose side that competence comes. We shall have enough, Edward, for happiness, and though I know it would have been more pleasure to yourself if the greater part of our little fortune had been brought by you, yet I am very glad that I have it, as you have not."
"But your mother--your guardian, Mary?" said Ned Hayward, still in a doubtful tone.
Mary laughed, but with a slight touch of vexation in the tone; and she exclaimed,
"I do believe he will not have me, even when I have almost offered myself to him!"
But Ned Hayward would not lie under that imputation, and he cast his arms round his fair companion, assuring her that if she had the wealth of the world, the only portion he would value would be herself.