And it is clever and--honourable--of Stephen, to be the best of his family.' 'Yes.

"Let a beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at the king's mess."' 'You insult me, papa!' she burst out.

'You do, you do! He is my own Stephen, he is!' 'That may or may not be true, Elfride,' returned her father, again uncomfortably agitated in spite of himself 'You confuse future probabilities with present facts,--what the young man may be with what he is.

We must look at what he is, not what an improbable degree of success in his profession may make him.

The case is this: the son of a working-man in my parish who may or may not be able to buy me up--a youth who has not yet advanced so far into life as to have any income of his own deserving the name, and therefore of his father's degree as regards station--wants to be engaged to you.