. You shrink from
me -«
    »No, I don't,« Laura, said, and here the hand went out resolutely, and laid
itself in Warrington's. She had divined his story from some previous hints let
fall by him and his first words at its commencement.
    »She was a yeoman's daughter in the neighbourhood,« Warrington said, with
rather a faltering voice, »and I fancied - what all young men fancy. Her parents
knew who my father was, and encouraged me, with all sorts of coarse artifices
and scoundrel flatteries, which I see now, about their house. To do her justice,
I own she never cared for me, but was forced into what happened by the threats
and compulsion of her family. Would to God that I had not been deceived; but in
these matters we are deceived because we wish to be so, and I thought I loved
that poor woman.
    What could come of such a marriage? I found, before long, that I was married
to a boor. She could not comprehend one subject that interested me. Her dullness
palled upon me till I grew to loathe it. And after some time of a wretched,
furtive union - I must tell you all - I found letters somewhere (and such
letters they were!) which showed me that her heart, such as it was, had never
been mine, but had always belonged to a person of her own degree.
    At my father's death I paid what debts I had contracted at college, and
settled every shilling which remained to me in an annuity upon - upon those who
bore my name, on condition that they should hide themselves away, and not assume
it. They have kept that condition, as they would break it for more money. If I
had earned fame or reputation, that woman would have come to claim it; if I had
made a name for myself, those who had no right to it would have borne it; and I
entered life at twenty - God help me - hopeless and ruined beyond remission. I
was the boyish victim of vulgar cheats, and, perhaps, it is only of late I have
found out how hard - ah, how hard - it is to forgive them. I told you the moral
before, Pen; and now I have told you the fable. Beware how you marry out of your
degree. I was made for a better lot than this, I think; but God has awarded me
this one. And so, you see, it is for me to look
