t was not difficult to
see how she had developed into the sorrowful, careworn woman whom Wyvis
Brand called mother; but she came of a thoroughly bad stock, and was not
untouched in reputation. The county people cut Mark Brand after his
marriage, and never took any notice of his wife; and they were horrified
when he insisted on naming his eldest son after his wife's family, as if
he gloried in the lowliness of her origin. But when Wyvis was a small
boy, his father resolved that neither he nor his children should be
flouted and jeered at by county magnates any longer. He went abroad, and
remained abroad until his death, when Wyvis was twenty years of age and
Cuthbert, the younger son, was barely twelve. Some people said that the
discovery of some particularly disgraceful deed was imminent when he
left his native shores, and that it was for this reason that he had
never returned to England; but Mark Brand himself always spoke as if his
health were too weak, his nerves too delicate, to bear the rough breezes
of his own country and the brusque manners of his compatriots. He had
brought up his son according to his own ideas; and the result did not
seem entirely satisfactory. Vague rumors occasionally reached Beaminster
of scrapes and scandals in which the young Brands figured; it was said
that Wyvis was a particularly black sheep, and that he did his best to
corrupt his younger brother Cuthbert. The news that he was coming back
to Brand Hall was not received with enthusiasm by those who heard it.

Wyvis' own story had been a sad one--perhaps more sad than scandalous;
but it was a story that the Beaminster people were never to hear aright.
Few knew it, and most of those who knew it had agreed to keep it secret.
That his wife and child were living, many persons in Paris were aware;
that they had separated was also known, but the reason of that
separation was to most persons a secret. And Wyvis, who had a great
dislike to chatterers, made up his mind when he came to Beaminster that
he would tell to nobody the history of the past few years. Had it not
been for his mother's sad face, he fancied that he could have put it out
of his mind altogether. He half resented the pertinacity with which she
seemed to brood upon it. The fact that she had forwarded--had almost
insisted upon--the unfortunate marriage, weighed heavily upon her mind.
There had been a point at which Wyvis would have given it up. But his
mother had espoused the side o