She reached out an anxious hand, and touched his shoulder. His eyes were
playing with the pattern of the carpet; but he slowly raised them to
hers, and looked for a moment without speaking. Suddenly, in spite of
himself, he laughed--laughed outright, but not loudly.

Marriage? Yes, here was the touchstone. Marry a girl whose family had
been notable for hundreds of years? For the moment he did not remember
his own family. This was one of the times when he was only conscious
that he had savage blood, together with a strain of New World French,
and that his life had mostly been a range of adventure and common toil.
This new position was his right, but there were times when it seemed to
him that he was an impostor; others, when he felt himself master of it
all, when he even had a sense of superiority--why he could not tell;
but life in this old land of tradition and history had not its due
picturesqueness. With his grandmother's proposal there shot up in him
the thought that for him this was absurd. He to pace the world beside
this fine queenly creature--Delia Gasgoyne--carrying on the traditions
of the Belwards! Was it, was it possible?

"Pardon me," he said at last gently, as he saw Lady Belward shrink and
then look curiously at him, "something struck me, and I couldn't help
it."

"Was what I said at all ludicrous?"

"Of course not; you said what was natural for you to say, and I thought
what was natural for me to think, at first blush."

"There is something wrong," she urged fearfully. "Is there any reason
why you cannot marry? Gaston,"--she trembled towards him,--"you have not