you choose to do so, but on
the other hand we shall never speak to you again."

Wyvis uttered a short laugh, as if he were scornfully ready to meet that
contingency, but Margaret's look of startled horror recalled him to
decorum.

"You would be no longer any child of ours," said Lady Caroline, calmly.
"Your father concurs with me in this. You have known our views so long
and so well that we feel it almost necessary to explain this to you. Mr.
Brand wishes you to choose, as a matter of fact, between his house and
ours. Make your choice--make it now, if you like; but understand--and I
am very sorry to be obliged to say a thing which may perhaps hurt the
feelings of some persons present--that if you marry the son of a
ploughman and a scullery-maid--I do not mean to be more offensive than I
can help--you cannot possibly expect to be received at Helmsley Court."

"But, mamma! he ranks as one of the Brands of the Red House. Nobody
knows."

"But everybody _will_ know," said Lady Caroline, calmly. "I shall take
care of that. I don't know how it is that Mr. Brand has got possession
of the family estate--to which he has, of course, no right; but it has
an ugly look of fraud about it, to which public attention had better be
drawn at once. Mr. Brand may have been a party to the deception all
along, for aught I know."

"That statement needs no refutation," said Wyvis, calmly, though with a
dangerous glitter in his eyes. "I shall prove my integrity by handing
over the Red House to my bro----to Cuthbert Brand, who is of course the
rightful owner of the place."

"You hear. Margaret?" said Lady Caroline. "You will not even have the
Red House in your portion. You have to choose between your mother and
father and friends, position, wealth, refinement, luxury--and Wyvis
Brand. That is your alternative. He will have no position of his own, no
house to offer you; I am amazed at his selfishness, I must own, at
making such a proposition."

"No, madam," said Mrs. Brand, breaking into the conversation for the
first time, and seeming to forget her timidity in the defence of her
beloved son Wyvis; "we are not so selfish as you think. The estate was
left to Wyvis by my husband's will. He preferred that Wyvis should be
master here; and we thought that no one knew the truth."

"But I shall not be master here any longer," said her son. "I will hand
over the place to Cuthbert at once. I will take nothing on false
pretences. So, Margaret, choo