tone and carried it dwindling away to the most distant of throttled
interrogatives. She had, in this manner, only to ask,--her hearing
received the comforting answer it desired; for she could take that thin
far sound as a travelling laughter of incredulity, triumphant derision.

This meant to her--though she scarcely knew it, though the most wilful of
women declined to know it--a state of alarm. She had said of her brother
in past days that he would have his time of danger after striking sixty.
The dangerous person was to be young.

But, then, Ormont had high principles with regard to the dues to his
family. His principles could always be trusted. The dangerous young
person would have to be a person of lineage, of a certain station at
least: no need for a titled woman, only for warranted good blood. Is that
to be found certificated out of the rolls of Society? It may just
possibly be found, without certificate, however, in those muddled caverns
where the excluded intermingle. Here and there, in a peasant family, or a
small country tradesman's just raised above a peasant, honest
regenerating blood will be found. Nobles wanting refreshment from the
soil might do worse than try a slip of one of those juicy weeds;
ill-fated, sickly Royalties would be set-up striding through another
half-century with such invigoration, if it could be done for them! There
are tales. The tales are honourably discredited by the crazy
constitutions of the heirs to the diadem.

Yes, but we are speculating on the matter seriously, as though it were
one of intimate concern to the family. What is there to make us think
that Ormont would marry? Impossible to imagine him intimidated. Unlikely
that he, a practised reader of women, having so little of the woman in
him, would be melted by a wily girl; as women in the twilight situation
have often played the trick to come into the bright beams. How? They do a
desperate thing, and call it generosity, and then they appeal from it to
my lord's generosity; and so the two generosities drive off in a close
carriage with a friend and a professional landlady for the blessing of
the parson, and are legitimately united. Women have won round fools to
give way in that way. And quite right too! thought Lady Charlotte, siding
with nature and justice, as she reflected that no woman created would win
round her brother to give way in that way. He was too acute. The moment
the woman showed sign of becoming an actress, h