that you have heard this history before? How long have you known it?"
"Before I left Eskdale."
"And you have had all this anxiety on your mind while you have been working like a slave in your attendance on me, and seeming to have no care but for my health."
"Why, you foolish old darling, don't you see that the great care swallowed up the little one? I hardly know how to explain myself, because I can understand that as you have been attached all your life to St. Mary's and Teviot House, and your name and station, it would be a cruel trial to you to lose all this; so I did feel at times very unhappy when I thought you had to hear it all as soon as you were strong enough to bear it; but so far as I am concerned, dear Teviot (do not think me unfeeling), but this is not the sort of trial that affects me very deeply."
He looked at her, and saw that she was speaking from her heart, and not merely with the intention of comforting him; and the suspicions he had once entertained, that it was for his position, and not for himself, that she had married him, were remembered but to be repented of, and forgotten for ever. He bent his head on hers, and whispered, "My treasure above all other treasures, whatever happens, I am not to be pitied. I have what I have longed for all my life—a real, true love to depend on."
The subject of the lawsuit once begun, it was of course a constant theme of discussion; but Lord Teviot was too feeble to take any active part even on a point of such moment, and was quite satisfied to know that Lord Eskdale was acting for him, and that Lord Beaufort was staying in London solely that he might be in consultation with the lawyers. The case, as Mr. Lorimer's advisers stated it, was a very simple one. Henry, Marquess of Teviot, had two brothers, Robert, the father of this Henry Lorimer, who was born, as had always been supposed, before the
