r."

"And you are engaged?"

"By no means. I wish I were. You haven't seen her, but I suppose you
have heard of her?"

"Ralph spoke of her,--and told me that she was very lovely."

"Upon my word, I don't think that even in a picture I ever saw
anything approaching to her beauty. You've seen that thing at
Dresden. She is more like that than anything I know. She seems almost
too grand for a fellow to speak to, and yet she looks as if she
didn't know it. I don't think she does know it." Gregory said not a
word, but looked at his brother, listening. "But, by George there's
a dignity about her, a sort of self-possession, a kind of noli me
tangere, you understand, which makes a man almost afraid to come near
her. She hasn't sixpence in the world."

"That needn't signify to you now."

"Not in the least. I only just mention it to explain. And her father
was nobody in particular,--some old general who used to wear a cocked
hat and keep the niggers down out in one of the colonies. She herself
talked of coming home here to be a governess;--by Jove! yes, a
governess. Well, to look at her, you'd think she was born a countess
in her own right."

"Is she so proud?"

"No;--it's not that. I don't know what it is. It's the way her head
is put on. Upon my word, to see her turn her neck is the grandest
thing in the world. I never saw anything like it. I don't know that
she's proud by nature,--though she has got a dash of that too. Don't
you know there are some horses show their breeding at a glance? I
don't suppose they feel it themselves; but there it is on them, like
the Hall-mark on silver. I don't know whether you can understand a
man being proud of his wife."

"Indeed I can."

"I don't mean of her personal qualities, but of the outside get up.
Some men are proud of their wives' clothes, or their jewels, or their
false hair. With Mary nothing of that sort could have any effect; but
to see her step, or move her head, or lift her arm, is enough to make
a man feel,--feel,--feel that she beats every other woman in the
world by chalks."

"And she is to be mistress here?"

"Indeed she should,--to-morrow, if she'd come."

"You did ask her?"

"Yes,--I asked her."

"And what did she say?"

"Nothing that I cared to hear. She had just been told all this
accursed story about Polly Neefit. I'll never forgive Sir
Thomas,--never." The reader will be pleased to remember that
Sir Thomas did not mention Miss Neefit's name, or any