and never being afraid of the
opinions which he held. His bishop had not loved him, nor had he made
himself dear to the bench of bishops generally. He had the reputation
of having been in early life a sporting parson. He had written a book
which had been characterised as tending to infidelity, and had more
than once been invited to state dogmatically what was his own belief.
He had never quite done so, and had then been made a dean. Brotherton,
as all the world knows, is a most interesting little city, neither a
Manchester nor a Salisbury; full of architectural excellencies, given
to literature, and fond of hospitality. The Bishop of Brotherton,--who
did not love the dean,--was not a general favourite, being strict,
ascetic, and utterly hostile to all compromises. At first there were
certain hostile passages between him and the new dean. But the Dean,
who was and is urbanity itself, won the day, and soon became certainly
the most popular man in Brotherton. His wife's fortune doubled his
clerical income, and he lived in all respects as a dean ought to live.
His wife had died very shortly after his promotion, and he had been
left with one only daughter on whom to lavish his cares and his
affection.

Now we must turn for a few lines to the family of Lord George Germain.
Lord George was the brother of the Marquis of Brotherton, whose family
residence was at Manor Cross, about nine miles from the city. The
wealth of the family of the Germains was not equal to their rank, and
the circumstances of the family were not made more comfortable by the
peculiarities of the present marquis. He was an idle, self-indulgent,
ill-conditioned man, who found that it suited his tastes better to live
in Italy, where his means were ample, than on his own property, where
he would have been comparatively a poor man. And he had a mother and
four sisters, and a brother with whom he would hardly have known how to
deal had he remained at Manor Cross. As it was, he allowed them to keep
the house, while he simply took the revenue of the estate. With the
marquis I do not know that it will be necessary to trouble the reader
much at present. The old marchioness and her daughters lived always at
Manor Cross in possession of a fine old house in which they could have
entertained half the county, and a magnificent park,--which, however,
was let for grazing up to the garden-gates,--and a modest income
unequal to the splendour which should have been displayed