e or two very good offers,
Margaret, and you have refused everything. You must really begin to
think a little more seriously of your eligible suitors! This last one,
however, is not an eligible one at all."

"Who, mamma?" said Margaret, faintly.

"The very last man whom I should have expected to come forward," said
her mother. "Indeed, I call it the greatest piece of presumption I ever
heard of. Considering that we are not on visiting terms, even."

"Oh, mamma, do tell me who you mean!"

Lady Adair arched her pencilled eyebrows over this movement of
impatience. "Really, Margaret, darling! But I suppose I must be lenient:
a girl naturally desires to hear about her suitors; but you must not
interrupt me another time, love. It is that most impossible man, Mr.
Brand of the Red House."

Margaret's face flushed from brow to chin. "Why impossible, mamma?"

"Dear child! You are so unworldly! But there is a point at which
unworldliness becomes folly. We must stop short of that. Poor Mr. Brand
is, for one thing, quite out of society."

"Not in Paris or London, mamma. Only in this place, where people are
narrow and bigoted and censorious."

"And where, unfortunately, he has to live," said Lady Caroline, with
gentle firmness. "It matters to _us_ very little what they say of him in
Paris or London: it matters a great deal what the County says."

"But if the County could be induced to take him up!" said Margaret,
rather breathlessly. "He was at Lady Ashley's the other day, and he
seemed to know a great many people. And if you--we--received him, it
would make all the difference in the world."

"Oh, no doubt we could float him if we chose," said Lady Caroline,
indifferently; "but would it really be worth the trouble? Even if he
went everywhere, dear, he would not be a man that I should care to
cultivate; he has not a nice reputation at all."

"Nobody knows of anything wrong that he has done," Margaret averred,
with burning cheeks.

"Well, I have heard of one or two things that are not to his credit. I
am told that he drinks and plays a good deal, that his language to his
groom is something awful, and that he makes his poor little boy drunk
every night." In this version had Wyvis Brand's faults and weaknesses
gone forth to the world near Beaminster! "Then he has very disagreeable
people to visit him, and his mother is not in the least a lady--a
publican's daughter, and not, I am afraid, quite respectable in her
youth." La