aid the young man, moodily.
"There is no fighting against fate. The Brands are doomed, mother: we
shall die out and be forgotten--all the better for the world, too. It is
time we were done with: we are a bad lot."

"Cuthbert is not bad. And you--Wyvis, you have your child."

"Have I? A child that I have not seen since it was six months old!
Brought up by its mother--a woman without heart or principle or anything
that is good! Much comfort the child is likely to be to me when I get
hold of it."

"When will that be?" said Mrs. Brand, as if speaking to herself rather
than to him. But Wyvis replied:

"When she is tired of it--not before. I do not know where she is."

"Does she not draw her allowance?"

"Not regularly. And she refused her address when she last appeared at
Kirby's. I suppose she wants to keep the child away from me. She need
not trouble. The last thing I want is her brat to bring up."

"Wyvis!"

But to his mother's remonstrating exclamation Wyvis paid no attention in
the least: his mood was fitful, and he was glad to step out of the
ill-lighted room into the hall, and thence to the silence and solitude
of the grounds about the house.

Brand Hall had been practically deserted for the last few years. A
tenant or two had occupied it for a little time soon after its late
master's withdrawal from the country; but the house was inconvenient and
remote from towns, and it was said, moreover, to be damp and unhealthy.
A caretaker and his wife had, therefore, been its only inhabitants of
late, and a great deal of preparation had been required to make it fit
for its owner when he at last wrote to his agents in Beaminster to
intimate his intention of settling at the Hall.

The Brands had for many a long year been renowned as the most unlucky
family in the neighborhood. They had once possessed a great property in
the county; but gambling losses and speculation had greatly reduced
their wealth, and even in the time of Wyvis Brand's grandfather the
prestige of the family had sunk very low. In the days of Mark Brand, the
father of Wyvis, it sank lower still. Mark Brand was not only "wild,"
but weak: not only weak, but wicked. His career was one of riotous
dissipation, culminating in what was generally spoken of as "a low
marriage"--with the barmaid of a Beaminster public-house. Mary Wyvis had
never been at all like the typical barmaid of fiction or real life: she
was always pale, quiet, and refined-looking, and i