"It is a request your father ardently desires me to make, and I do not know how to speak to you concerning the subject in the way I wish." I could not ask her to marry me, and tell her with the same breath that I did not want her for my wife.

I felt I must wait for a further opportunity to say that I spoke only because her father had required me to do so, and that circumstances forced me to put the burden of refusal upon her.

I well knew that she would refuse me, and then I intended to explain.
"Why, what is it all about ?" asked the girl in surprise, suspecting, I believe, what was to follow.
"It is this: your father is anxious that his vast estates shall not pass out of the family name, and he wishes you to be my wife, so that your children may bear the loved name of Vernon." I could not have chosen a more inauspicious time to speak.

She looked at me for an instant in surprise, turning to scorn.

Then she spoke in tones of withering contempt.
"Tell my father that I shall never bear a child by the name of Vernon.