'I mean the best possible for you. Meantime, you are quite fixed in your own mind: you are set upon this thing. That is clear. There is one other way of looking at it. You yourself seem chiefly desirous, I think, to make the man you love happy. So much the better for him.—Are you quite satisfied that the other party to the agreement, your lover, will remain happy while he sees you slaving for him, while he feels his own helplessness, and while he gets no relief from the grinding poverty of his household—while—lastly—he sees his sons taking their place on a lower level, and his daughters taking a place below the rank of gentlewoman?'

'I reply by another question.—You have had George in your office as articled clerk and managing clerk for eight years. Is he, or is he not, steadfast, clear-headed, one who knows his own mind, and one who can be trusted in all things?'

'Perhaps,' said Mr. Dering, inclining his head. 'How does that advance him?'

'Then, if you trust him, why should not I trust him? I trust George altogether—altogether. If he does not get on, it will be through no fault of his. We shall bear our burden bravely, believe me, Mr. Dering. You will not hear him—or me—complain. Besides, I am full of hope. Oh! it can never be in this country that a man who is a good workman should not be able to get on. Then I can paint a little—not very well, perhaps. But I have thought—you will not laugh at me—that I might paint portraits and get a little money that way.'

'It is quite possible that he may succeed, and that you may increase the family income. Everything is possible. But, remember, you are building on possibilities, and I on facts. Plans very beautiful and easy at the outset often prove most difficult in the carrying out. My experience of marriages is learned by fifty years of work, not imaginative, but practical. I have learned that without adequate means no marriage can be happy. That is to say, I have never come across any case of wedded poverty where the husband or the wife, or both, did not regret the day when they faced poverty together instead of separately. That, I say, is my experience of such marriages. It is so easy to say that hand in hand evils may be met and endured which would be intolerable if one was alone. It isn't only hand in hand, Elsie. The hands are wanted for the baby, and the evils will fall on the children yet unborn.'

Elsie hung her head. Then she replied timidly: 'I have thought even of that. It only means that we go lower down in the social scale.'

'Only? Yet that is everything. People who are well up the ladder too often deride those who are fighting and struggling to get up higher. It is great folly or great ignorance to laugh. Social position, in such a country as ours, means independence, self-respect, dignity, all kinds of valuable things. You will throw these all away—yet your grandfathers won them for you by hard work. You are yourself a gentlewoman—why? Because they made their way up in the world, and placed their sons also in the way to climb. That is how families are made—by three generations at least of steady work uphill.'

Elsie shook her head sadly. 'We can only hope,' she murmured.

'One more word, and I will say no more. Remember, that love or no love, resignation or not, patience or not, physical comfort is the beginning and the foundation of all happiness. If you and your husband can satisfy the demands of physical comfort, you may be happy—or at least resigned. If not—— Well, Elsie, that is all. I should not have said so much had I not promised your mother and your sister. I am touched, I confess, by your courage and your resolution.'

'We mean never to regret, never to look back, and always to work and hope,' said Elsie. 'You will remain our friend, Mr. Dering?'