dates.' His voice became timidly slow at this point.

'No; don't take trouble to say more. You are a dear honest fellow
to say so much as you have; and it is not so dreadful either. It
has become a normal thing that millionaires commence by going up
to London with their tools at their back, and half-a-crown in
their pockets. That sort of origin is getting so respected,' she
continued cheerfully, 'that it is acquiring some of the odour of
Norman ancestry.'

'Ah, if I had MADE my fortune, I shouldn't mind. But I am only a
possible maker of it as yet.'

'It is quite enough. And so THIS is what your trouble was?'

'I thought I was doing wrong in letting you love me without
telling you my story; and yet I feared to do so, Elfie. I dreaded
to lose you, and I was cowardly on that account.'

'How plain everything about you seems after this explanation! Your
peculiarities in chess-playing, the pronunciation papa noticed in
your Latin, your odd mixture of book-knowledge with ignorance of
ordinary social accomplishments, are accounted for in a moment.
And has this anything to do with what I saw at Lord Luxellian's?'

'What did you see?'

'I saw the shadow of yourself putting a cloak round a lady. I was
at the side door; you two were in a room with the window towards
me. You came to me a moment later.'