“I do not, indeed, believe, dear Laura,” he said, “that your father would have trusted me so entirely in this business, if it had not been for some words concerning myself which were spoken to him by Lord Byerdale when I was not present.  They were repeated to me afterwards by Sherbrooke, and were to the effect, that although, in consequence of some of the late unfortunate disturbances in the country—­the rebellions, the revolutions, the changes of dynasties that have happened within the last twenty years—­it was necessary to conceal my birth and station, yet my blood was as pure and ancient as that of your father himself.  This, I think, made a change in all his feelings towards me.”

Wilton felt the small rounded fingers of Laura’s hand rest, for a single instant, more heavily in his own, while she drew a deep long breath, as if a weight had been taken from her bosom.

“Oh, Wilton!” she said, “it makes all the difference in his views.  It will make all the difference in our fate.  You know that it would make none to me; that the man I loved would be loved under any circumstances of fortune or station, but with him it is the first, the greatest consideration.  There may be difficulties still; there may be opposition; for, as you know, I am an only child, and my father thinks that nothing can equal what I have a right to expect; but still that opposition will vanish when he sees that my happiness is concerned, if the great and predominant prejudice of his education is not arrayed against us.  Oh!  Wilton, Wilton, your words have made me very happy.”

Her words certainly made Wilton happy in return;—­indeed, most happy.  His fate had suddenly brightened from all that was dark and cheerless, from a situation in which the sweet, early dream of love itself but rendered everything that was sombre, painful, and distressing in his course, more gloomy, more bitter, more full of despair, it had changed, to the possession and the hope of all that the most sanguine imagination could have pictured of glad, and joyful, and happy, to the prospect of wealth and station, to the hope of obtaining the being that he loved best on earth, and to the certainty of possessing her early, her first, her warm, her full affection.

Had Wilton given way to what he felt at that moment, he would have clasped her to his heart and sealed the covenant of their love on the sweet lips that gave him such assurance of happiness.  But he remembered that she was there alone with him, in full confidence, under the safeguard of all his best feelings, and he would not for the world have done one thing that in open day could have called the colour into her cheek.  He loved her deeply, fully, and nobly, and though, under other circumstances, he might scarcely have hesitated, he now forebore.  But again and again he pressed his lips upon her hand, and thanked her again and again for all that she had said, and for all the hopes and glad tidings that her words implied.