When I come to beg your hand in marriage of your guardian, what shall I answer him of the questions he will ask me of myself--touching my family, my parentage and all the rest that he will crave to know ?" She observed that he was very white again.

"Need you enter into that?
A man is himself; not his father or his family." And then she checked.
"You make me plead too much," she said, a crimson flood in her fair cheeks.

"I'll say no more than I have said.

Already have I said more than I intended.

And you have wanted mercy that you could drive me to it.