ndescended to trade. To trade! Like us poor peasants who have risen
from ditches!"

A cloud crept over the fair brow, and she cast down her eyes.

"Why, it is good for trade!" pursued Obenreizer, enthusiastically. "It
ennobles trade! It is the misfortune of trade, it is its vulgarity, that
any low people--for example, we poor peasants--may take to it and climb
by it. See you, my dear Vendale!" He spoke with great energy. "The
father of Miss Marguerite, my eldest half-brother, more than two times
your age or mine, if living now, wandered without shoes, almost without
rags, from that wretched Pass--wandered--wandered--got to be fed with the
mules and dogs at an Inn in the main valley far away--got to be Boy
there--got to be Ostler--got to be Waiter--got to be Cook--got to be
Landlord. As Landlord, he took me (could he take the idiot beggar his
brother, or the spinning monstrosity his sister?) to put as pupil to the
famous watchmaker, his neighbour and friend. His wife dies when Miss
Marguerite is born. What is his will, and what are his words to me, when
he dies, she being between girl and woman? 'All for Marguerite, except
so much by the year for you. You are young, but I make her your ward,
for you were of the obscurest and the poorest peasantry, and so was I,
and so was her mother; we were abject peasants all, and you will remember
it.' The thing is equally true of most of my countrymen, now in trade in
this your London quarter of Soho. Peasants once; low-born drudging Swiss
Peasants. Then how good and great for trade:" here, from having been
warm, he became playfully jubilant, and touched the young wine-merchant's
elbows again with his light embrace: "to be exalted by gentlemen."

"I do not think so," said Marguerite, with a flushed cheek, and a look
away from the visitor, that was almost defiant. "I think it is as much
exalted by us peasants."

"Fie, fie, Miss Marguerite," said Obenreizer. "You speak in proud
England."

"I speak in proud earnest," she answered, quietly resuming her work, "and
I am not English, but a Swiss peasant's daughter."

There was a dismissal of the subject in her words, which Vendale could
not contend against. He only said in an earnest manner, "I most heartily
agree with you, Miss Obenreizer, and I have already said so, as Mr.
Obenreizer will bear witness," which he by no means did, "in this house."

Now, Vendale's eyes were quick eyes, and sharply watching Madame Dor